Let's face it - today's lounge room is far more complex than our parent's. Between the high-tech TV, Hi Fi system Home Theatre gear, DVD player, VCR and Media Centre PC we're all drowning in a sea of complexity and remote controls.

That's where the Harmony 525 Advanced Universal Remote comes in. Not only does it replace up to 15 individual remotes but it automates your lounge room by combining the operations of all those remotes.

What: Harmony 525 Advanced Universal Remote
Why buy? Easy to set up, easy to use
Why pass? LCD is a little small
Score (max 5) 4
Buy from Logitech Harmony 520 Advanced Universal Remote at Amazon [Affiliate Link]

Once I'd extricated the Harmony 525 from its packaging (no mean feat given the nature of the bubble packaging it comes in) I installed the accompanying software to my Mac. Installation was straightforward although why it insisted on a system reboot is a little beyond me. However, after the restart I launched the software and it was all good to go.

The Harmony 525 is programmed by using a database of thousands of devices that Lgitech stores online. I needed to create an account with Logitech (great, another account and password to keep) and from there I could add the various bits of hardware in my lounge to my user profile. I added at TV, DVD/VCR combo, Apple TV and home theatre system. Each component was of a different brand.

The next step was to create some macros. A macro is a collection of commands that, when executed, enable a particular activity. For example, to watch a DVD I need to turn my TV on, set the correct AV output, turn on the DVD/VCR combo and power up the home theatre system and set it to the correct audio output. In the past I needed to use three separate remotes and know what all the different outputs were to make it work. With the Logitech Harmony Remote Software, all I had to do was follw a wizard that configures the remote to all those things by pressing a single button.

I followed the wizard and created macros for watching DVDs, listening to the radio through my tuner, watching TV, playing games and using the Apple TV. I was even able to create a few macros while away from home - you don;t need the remote in order to create macros.

I then connected the Harmony 525 to my mac using the supplied USB cable. In fact, the remote even came with a fresh set of batteries in case the ones it ships with are flat from folks using its on-screen demo while it was still in the store. Having connected the remote, I simply hit the "Update Remote" button and my remote was updated.

The LCD in the top section of the unit was then labelled with four of various macros. As I'd created more than four, I can use the left and right scrolling buttons, below the screen, to scroll through my list. Pressing one of the buttons adjacent to my command automatically powered up each of my devices and set the correct out puts.

To give an indication of the quality of Logitech's database of devices, I added a new device, a Blu-Ray player and was able to set up the Harmony 525 so that I could configure the new device without ever using the original remote.

I could wax lyrical about how much easier my lounge room is to use now. Suffice it is to say that I'm a big fan of the Harmony 525 Advanced Universal Remote. It makes using the various devices in the lounge room easier and reduces the clutter by letting me operate everything from a single unit.

Some months ago, I posted some thoughts on Christian funerals. In that I said

I can't help but to think how the purpose and love of Christ would be source of comfort and how the Holy Spirit, if we let it work through us, would be a source of peace for people.

Well, on the 5th of December 2008, my father died suddenly. My father and I were very close. As I've grown up (a process that;s still going on) I've come to respect and understand my father more every single day. His loss has hit me in ways that I never expected. While he's always close to the top of my thoughts, I find that it's little things that get to me the most. Like when the kids received their school reports or I got my university results.

However, at some of those low moments I get great strength and reassurance in prayer. My dad was a Christian and I know that his belief in the risen Lord Jesus Christ means that he has gone to heaven and that I'll see him again when I die.

 death • heaven

Yeah - so I've been off the air for a while. I'll explain why in a subsequent post. For the first time ever, I actually stood up at the lectern at my church and preached. It was the Christmas Eve family service and I chose the rather tricky passage of Hebrews 1:1-4.

For those that are interested here's a copy of my sermon notes. A recording will be at this page in the next few days as well.

 Christmas • Hebrews

I recently interviewed Melbourne man Doug Retchford and talked about his home audio setup.

The story is at The Age.

 Home Theatre • Sonos

Over at "The Age" I've penned a comparison of four online music services.

It's worth noting that The Sanity LoadIt service was shut down between my writing of the story and the publication.

Here's the story for your reading pleasure.

 Online Music Stores

Another review of mine has popped up over at The Age. This one's for the Maxon Visimax.
Anyone who's had to give a visual presentation knows that carrying a projector and all of its associated bits and pieces requires a team of donkeys and a strong back. Well, Maxon has solved the problem with its Visimax projector, which fits easily into the palm of your hand.

 Maxon Visimax • projector

It must be the reason for it - Toshiba has announced that they'll be giving away a free NB100 NetBook Computer (by redemption) with every 37”, 42” and 46” high definition Toshiba XV500 series LCD TV.

I've got an 37" XV500 series that I'm testing at the moment and it's a nice TV. I've not played with the NB100 but aan $800 freebie, if you're in the market for one as well as a TV, might be enough to tip your decision making one way or the other.

 freebies • LCD TV • netbook

OK - so it's not 100% free but local 3G carrier, Vodafone, is giving away a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook for $0 upfront on a $69.95 per month plan, including 5GB of Mobile Broadband data per month on a 24 month contract.

The Mini 9 is currently selling on the Australian Dell site for $549 (about $360USD) and has a pretty decent spec sheet that weighs in at only 1.035kg with Windows XP, a glossy 8.9 inch LED display, 1.3 mega pixel webcam, memory card reader, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 16GB solid state drive (SSD) storage.

The real deal clincher is that the Mini 9 has a built-in 3G modem that Vodafone reckons "delivers increased battery life and network reception, compared to using a USB modem". While most 3G modems are pretty small, they are yet another gadget to pack. Having integrated 3G with a network unlocked netbook makes for a pretty nifty package.

As always, there are exit fees if you choose to back out before the 24 month contract is up. The Early Exit Fee is $55 ($25 5GB mobile broadband plan plus $30 for Netbook) for each month remaining on contract.

 Mobile Broadband • Vodafone

If you know anything about Apple, then you'd know that before Jonathon Ive and his design brilliance came The Woz - Steve Wozniak. Woz was the guy that created the first consumer computer. I've got a signed copy of Steve Wozniak, Inventor of the Apple Computer[Affiliate Link] and thought I'd share a few thoughts.

Title: Steve Wozniak, Inventor of the Apple Computer[Affiliate Link]
ISBN: 0945783086
Author: Martha E. Kendall
Publisher: Highland Publishing Group
Price: $12.95 USD from Amazon[Affiliate Link]
Rating: 4 out of 5

Summary

Steve Wozniak, Inventor of the Apple Computer is a bit like how I'd imagine Woz to be; low key. Framed as a series of short chapters focussing on specific parts of Woz's life like his time at Apple, his marriages, his teaching career. It tells of his incredible generousity and how, despite his substantial wealth, he has remained true to himself. If you're interested in Apple history - read it. If you like "feel good" stories - read it. In fact - just read it.

Review

I really enjoyed reading Steve Wozniak, Inventor of the Apple Computer. Although it's only a short book and took just a couple of days to read it's chock full of great stories. Despite the temptation, there's no slagging off against other people who were there when Woz started Apple and even after he left.

The author, Martha E. Kendall, has written a number of other biographies. She's chosen simple language to tell Woz's story and whenever a technical term is used it's italicised and defined in a glossary at the back of the book. This gives the impression of a book written as a school text.

You'd expect a story of one of the 20th century's great inventors to be a large glossy tome. But like Woz it's all quite low key. The pictures are black and white, the book is small and is published by a relatively small firm.

Steve Wozniak, Inventor of the Apple Computer is a great read. If you're looking for an in-depth character analysis then this isn't the place to look for it. However, it's still a great book.

If you read the book and want more then make sure you visit Woz's web site. You'll learn a lot more of some of the things that are just mentioned in the book. You can also order autographed copies from the site as there are still a few left.

 Apple • Steve Wozniak

Just for something a little different I thought I'd throw in a movie review.

The Pirates of Silicon Valley tells the stories of Apple's and Microsoft's births.

What: The Pirates of Silicon Valley
Why buy? History lesson, great story
Why pass? Might only appeal to nerds
Score (max 5) 4
Buy from Amazon [Affiliate link]

The story is interesting as when one considers the current positions of the two organisations and how they got to where they are today. Both Gates and Jobs are totally single-minded about their goals to build great computers and successful companies. Interestingly, they stood apart from other computer companies of the time because of the obsession with software. While IBM believed that the hardware would be the cashcow, Gates conversations with the creator of the Altair that his box was little more than flashing lights without his software was quite prophetic.

As a movie, I found it enjoyable. The portrayals of Jobs (by Noah Wyle of ER fame) and Gates (by Anthony Michael Hall) are very good although I wonder if the negative aspects of the two protaganist's personalities were overplayed. You get the impression from this movie that neither Gates or Jobs were particularly nice people.

While the main characters were great, the main supporting roles of Steve Wozniak (by Joey Slotnick), Steve Ballmer (by John Di Maggio and Paul Allen (by Josh Hopkins were excellent. Ballmer comes across as a crass sycophant with Wozniak and Allen being played quite sympathetically.

Important and funny events like Wozniak and Jobs' relationship with Captain Crunch and their famous blue boxes, Woz's Joke of the Day, Gate's arrest for speeding and his famous meeting with IBM when he licensed them an operating system he didn't have are all there. But it's the portrayal of the two men that most stand out.

The story is played out as one of Jobs being ultimately betrayed by Gates. While there has always been a lot made of the possiblity that Microsoft copied the Mac OS in the first release of Windows it can't be denied that the work of the visionaries of Xerox PARC make them the true forefathers of the modern GUI. While this given fleeting attention Gate's comment in the movie that Jobs was only annoyed because Microsoft stole it before Apple might be the most telling.

Now, I wasn't there in the '70s when all this happened. So, I can't vouch with the accuracy of the story but it seems to gel with what I've read.

As the movie is not available as far as I know in my part of the world I puchased it from Amazon [Affiliate link] it and converted it with Viddy Up and watched it on my iPhone while commuting between work and home.

 Movie • Pirates of Silicon Valley

Over at Hydrapinion, I've written a little story on McDonalds giving the boot to Telstra and introducing their own FREE WiFi service.

Stop by for a read.

 McDonalds • WiFi

You know those promotions where you buy a product and there's some code you have to enter by SMS or on a web site? I've always thought that they were a bit of a crock. This afternoon my wife picked up a copy of the Casino Royale DVD for me and there was a special promotion being run by Sony.

Seeing as the promotion required entry of a code onto a website figured that it cost me nothing so I went through the motions and - I won a prize. It's a Sony HTSF2000 Home Theatre System.

I've never won a competition so I'm pretty stoked. It'll go nicely with the TV we recently purchased.

 Home Theatre • Sony • Winners

I was just browsing the iTunes Store and caught this little gem.

Apparently the name "Dick" is a rude word in the Appleverse.

 iTunes • Political Correctness

OK - so I've been a little slack with the blog and haven't posted in way too long. After studying and doing my recent exam on the early New Testament Church at Ridley, I had a massive backlog of stories to write for APC, Australian Macworld, PC Update and The Age. I;m nearly caught up so I have a moment or two for some blogging and social networking.

Over at Hydrapinion, I've just published a story on some free iPhone apps.

 freebies • iPhone apps

I picked up my iPhone 3G about a week after the Australian release and have, for the large part, been really happy with the phone. The one nagging software hassle has been with Safari that seems to be very unstable for me. I seem to be able to crash it at least a couple of times per day. In particular, it doesn't seem to like me trying to scroll and zoom a page until it's completely finished loading the page.

My main beef has been with my carrier. Optus is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singtel, which is owned by the government of Singapore. Optus' cellular network, it seems to me, is oversubscribed and there seems to be little likelihood that the network will be augmented to the required degree.

So, in order to test my theory I've contacted Optus and had my iPhone carrier unlocked. The support tech on the phone, john, was very helpful and after i'd supplied my phone number and IMEI he informed me that my phone would be unlocked within 10 working days and that i'd receive an SMS telling me when the process was complete. Given that I anticipate an overseas trip next year this will make life easier as I'll be able to use a local SIM card and save on international roaming costs.

It also means that I can do some testing with different Optus SIM cards to see if the iphone is being speed-limited to "protect" the Optus network.

 iPhone unlocking • Optus

A couple of the writers at PC Authority have put together their Top 10 technology flaws in films.

It's an interesting list but omits what is perhaps the worst movie ever made - an Australian flick called Crosstalk. It's tagline - "Only the computer saw the murder...and it liked what it saw..."

 Movies • technology

During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I'm growing a Mo. That's right I'm bringing the Mo back because I'm passionate about tackling men's health issues and being proactive in the fight against men's depression and prostate cancer.

To donate to my Mo you can either:

Click here to donate online using your credit card or PayPal account, or

Write a cheque payable to ‘Movember Foundation', referencing my Registration Number 1477071 and mailing it to:

Movember Foundation
PO Box 292
Prahran VIC 3181

All donations over $2 are tax deductible.

The money raised by Movember is used to raise awareness of men's health issues and donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative. The PCFA and beyondblue will use the funds to fund research and increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer and depression.

Did you know:

Depression affects 1 in 6 men....most don't seek help. Untreated depression is a leading risk factor for suicide.
Last year in Australia 18,700 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 2,900 died of prostate cancer - equivalent to the number of women who will die from breast cancer annually.

Thanks for your support

I've picked up a semi regular gig writing for one of the most esteemed newspapers in the land - The Age. I've written a couple of roadtests recently that look at online storage services and RSS readers.

Compare: RSS readers: The near exponential growth of the internet has had a serious side-effect - information overload. How do you keep track of the ever-expanding list of websites you like to visit and find out when something new that's of interest appears?

Roadtest: online storage: The people most vigilant about backing up data are those who have lost data. Large corporate IT strategies can afford to store their backups away from the office so if the office is destroyed the data can be recovered. But most of us can't afford to have someone collect our daily or weekly backups from home and store them securely.

 Backup • RSS Readers

Yesterday, I penned a story for my weekly column on Hydrapinion on eBooks.

Why eBooks suddenly matter (to me): I've never really understood the whole eBook thing. I've tried - really, I have. I've also given audio books a go and quite like the idea of the convenience they offer. Studying requires that I read a wide variety of different references in addition to my lecture notes. This has lead me, for the first time, to establishing an electronic reference library so that I can carry my reference books with me.

By sheer coincidence, Drew Turney, who's standing in for Stephen Withers on the Mac column, also wrote a story on eBooks that's worth a look.

 eBooks

I've been a busy little bee preparing for exams and writing up a storm. Hence the lack of blogging action in recent weeks. I promise that I'll do better and be a little more disciplined after next week. I've not even been catching up with my RSS feeds as i just don't have the time at the moment.

in any case, a few more reviews of mine have popped up on APC Magazine's web site.

ASUS VW223B LCD display: dual screen without dual video cards: Although the "U" in USB stands for universal it's remained mainly focussed on storage and communications peripherals. However, ASUS turns that stereotype on its head with the VW223.

AOC Widescreen LCD Monitor 2219P2: an impressive display of wideness: AOC might be a new player in the local market, but they’re showing that they have plenty of talent when it comes to making great screens that don’t break the bank.

D-Link DNS-343 Four Bay NAS: ticks all the boxes: D-Link’s experience with network gear shows with the DNS-343.

Netgear RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router (WNR3500): the router to paradise?: Netgear delivers a high-end router that gets close to networking nirvana.

Synology DS508 Disk Station: expand your storage beyond: If you’re running out of storage space with your present system, the DS508 is a ripping NAS for the home or office.

Netgear Wireless-N + Gigabit Router (WNR854T): not just a pretty face: While beauty is only skin deep, Netgear’s WNR854T ticks most of the boxes when it comes to specs and performance as well.

 AOC • DLink • Monitors • Netgear • Routers

For the most part, Google's ads do a reasonable job of matching ads to content. Put simply, Google looks at a web page, works out what the page is about by looking at the placement and recurrence of words and then delivers ads that are in context. However, while researching the theological issues of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 I got the following.

You can get a full-sized (280kb) version of the image by clicking.

Google has taken the main subject, Christianity, and I think the word "seminal" on the right side next to the book's cover-page and come up with a link to an ad for Christian Masturbation (under the main text on the page.

 Google ads

OK - I'm researching a story on RSS readers for Livewire - part of the green Guide supplement in The Age. I need to be come up four or five alternatives for RSS readers that readers could look to.

So, I'm looking for suggestions. What RSS reader do you use?

 RSS Readers

At Ridley this week we looked at the letter to the Hebrews. It was a very challenging study but one particular verse has had my brain doing cartwheels as I try to work out its purpose.

From the NRSV:

For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.

It's like the author is saying that Christians who fall away from their faith have no chance of returning to God. In other words, the door opens only once. If this literal interpretation is correct then it has extreme ramifications.

On the other hand, is the author saying that when we turn away from God, no matter how subtly, that we are placing God and Jesus' saving sacrifice secondarily and treating God contemptuously.

The really trick element of this text, in my view, is "For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened...". Is is really impossible to be restored to repentance? I pray that the literal interpretation of this is incorrect as, through our fallen, sinful nature, we all put God aside at some time. On occasion, this is subtle but at other times it's more extreme.

Brown, in his commentary "The Message of Hebrews"[Affiliate Link] suggests that the ones who have "fallen away" are those that have completely rejected Christ. Brown says:

Some believers, who made an apparently excellent beginning in their Christian lives, are now not merely chronic invalids or spiritual casualties, but have become fierce opponents of the Christian gospel.

.

In other words, this is a response to apostasy, not just the daily (or even more frequent!) straying of faithful but fallen human beings.

Hopefully my thoughts and reading on this important segment of scripture is helpful to others grappling with the meaning of this text.

 apostasy • Hebrews

A recent review of mine has popped up at Australian Macworld.

HP iPaq 912c: HP's iPaq 912c promises plenty but doesn't quite hit the spot.

Enjoy!

 912c • HP • iPAQ

I've never really been an especially keen gamer. Sure, I was a little addicted to Wolfenstein (and it's follow-up Spear of Destiny) and wasted more than a few hours on classics like Duke Nukem (the platform and 3D versions), Commander Keen and Doom. However, i never really bought into the whole console gaming thing - until now.

While we were on holidays we stayed a friend's place and had occasion to play a few games on their Nintendo Wii [Affiliate link]. Now, i know that this was THE console for us as the whole family (me, my wife and the kids) all loved playing on it.

So, this weekend, we trundled down to a local home appliance reseller and laid down some hard-earned on a Nintendo Wii, a Wii Fit, Super Mario Carts with an extra steering wheel (there was a special bundle) and Wii Play with an extra controller and another Nunchuk [Affiliate Links].

So, thus far you're thinking that all's going well and that the whole family should be well satisfied. The problem was that our TV, a six year old Samsung CRT was running short on inputs. So, to top things off we also added a new Panasonic Viera HD LCD TV[Affiliate Link] to the lounge room. With the local TV stations due to start multicasting on HD soon with new content (in addition to the current transmission) it was only a matter of time before we'd need to bump up the TV so we took the opportunity to do that all now.

So, let the games begin!

 games • Nintendo Wii • Panasonic Viera • Wii

I'm back from a couple of weeks off and some reviews have popped up at APC Magazine's website.

AOC Widescreen LCD Monitor 2219P2: an impressive display of wideness: AOC might be a new player in the local market, but they’re showing that they have plenty of talent when it comes to making great screens that don’t break the bank.

D-Link DNS-343 Four Bay NAS: ticks all the boxes: D-Link’s experience with network gear shows with the DNS-343

HP DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display: perfect for pros: HP delivers a real heavyweight, in every sense of the word, with the HP DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display.

Enjoy!

I've held back on posting this for a few weeks as I always thought that Apple would resolve the iPhone's software problems. One of the most compelling iPhone features, for me, is Safari. Being able to read web sites while I'm out and about is a key element of the iPhone experience for me. However, Safari is broken.

Firstly, I'm still suffering some serious stability issues. As an example (and this is not a one-off scenario) I was reading a story at www.theage.com.au. Safari crashed three times. This happens to me several times per day. The sooner an alternate browser is developed and released the better although there's little chance of Apple allowing that.

Secondly, I think that Safari's design is seriously borked. Why doesn't it cache pages so that hitting the back button a few seconds after clicking a link doesn't require that the entire page is completely reloaded? Surely, it would have been easy (after all, we're told that the iPhone is running good ol' OS X) to have retained Safari's caching functions. This design flaw means that the amount of data being transferred to the iPhone via your carrier is being increased unnecessarily. The lack of caching also means that oft used images, like banner images that appear on every page in a single site, are re-downloaded every single time you move to a new page within a site. It's almost like Apple is programmatically increasing the amount of data we use for the benefit of the carriers.

I guess that I could do a factory reset of my iPhone to see if that resolves the Safari stability problems I'm seeing but a troll through various user forums suggests that I'm not Robinson Crusoe so there's no guarantee that a reset would fix things. Besides, I'm a busy person and the iPhone is meant to "just work". Isn't that the "Apple Way"?

So, Mr Apple - please fix Safari. Get it stable and sort out this dumb caching behaviour. Having to reload a page I was at just a few seconds ago over a slower connection is driving me bananas.

One more thing: Please let me access the iTunes Store over 3G. Limiting me to WiFi while I'm travelling is just cruel.

 iPhone • iPhone instability • iPhone Safari

Being a Melbournite I wasn't able to shoot over to Silicon Valley for the Google/ T-Mobile G1 smartphone announcement. I've had a quick scan of the coverage at ZDNet and note the following:

Firstly - I know these live blogs are written in a hurry but, frankly, this makes no sense to me.

I have to say it [Android phone] does look nice, but as people have said recently it is really a new feature phone (like the iPhone) and not a high powered mobile device like Windows Mobile and S60 devices.

When did "feature phone" become a category? Whatever he's smoking - I want some.

There's a laundry list of features including

• accelerometer
• MP3 player
• Google with Streetview
• Drag and drop in the OS
• No tethering
• No out-of-box Exchange
• No desktop application
• No central sync page (use with you data in the cloud only)
• No A2DP

I've not yet had a play but the spec sheet doesn't seem to be anything particularly special. I find it interesting that the carriers have so much power in the United States. Tethering (the ability to use a 3G phone as a modem with a computer) is missing. No other market so abuses customer choice and options.

In any case, I'm really looking forward to the G1. It seems to be the only potential competitor to the iPhone's innovative edge as Symbian and Windows Mobile have really been left in the dust.

It's interesting that the release of Chrome came such a short time before the G1 announcement. Sounds a lot like Safari for Windows and the iPhone to me.

 Android • Google • iPhone • Symbian • Windows Mobile

Over the last couple of days, I've been at a conference called the Influence Forum. Run by the folks from MediaConnect, it's an opportunity for journalists, vendors and PR people to get together to share ideas and to network.

To coin a phrase, I'm calling Influence a three tier conference. Tier One is the one you have at every conference or trade show. It's the formal stuff that forms the backbone of the conference. It's the formal sessions that you use to justify to conference to whoever is footing the bill for the conference. For many, this is the bit they expect to be most valuable.

Tier Two is the social element. It starts during the coffee breaks, meal times but extends to ad hoc "meetings" such as when people bump into each other during their free time. For many, this is where the "real work" happens. It's where the contacts get made and some of the real business happens. For me, I managed to chat with a couple of editors and, potentially, will be working for a couple of new publications.

Tier Three is the new one. This is social networking tier of conversations happening beneath the official business. At Influence, there was an active Twitter channel where a number of folks were contributing to the conversation. However, this conversation was below the radar of many participants and the presenters. In many ways it represented what was really going on.

The channel can be viewed here.

The whole hashtag and channel system for Twitter is very easy and adds a new dimension to conference interaction. Interestingly, MediaConnect CEO Phil Sim is right into the whole Web 2.0 thing but hasn't really embraced these emerging technologies in the biannual forums his company runs. Maybe next time...

Note: I attended the Influence Forum as a guest of MediaConnect

Last week, I subbed in for Stephen Withers and wrote a Mac column for Hydrapinion. Here's the story.

I cover

• The opening of the new Apple store in Melbourne
• iPhone 2.1 takes the iPhone out of public beta testing
• The latest Leopard update

 Apple • Apple Store Melbourne • iPhone

I'm about to take a holiday with the family and I've been thinking about the tech we'll be carrying and the challenges that poses.

Pop over to Hydrapinion for read and make a comment.

 Holidays

Over at Australian Macworld I review my MacBook Air.

As someone who writes lots of product reviews it's great to be able to review a product that I own and have tested in the real world rather than through a series of contrived tests. During a recent podcast, I mentioned that I'd moved from a MacBook Pro to a MacBook Air. This review is my reflections on using the Air as my "on the road" computer.

While I might be a journalist, I'm also a consumer so this is part personal reflection and part review. If you're thinking about buying an Air or a netbook, I reckon this might be worth a read.

 Apple • MacBook Air

I reviewed the current crop of browsers for The Age this week. The story is in the Green Guide (the entertainment and tech supplement on today's paper) or you can read it online if you prefer.

 Browsers • Chrome • Firefox • Internet Explorer • Opera • Safari

Over at Hydrapinion today, I pose the question - what handheld would you want at the end of the world?

Sure, it's a little unusual as blog topics go but I thought it would be a fun thing to explore

 Armageddon • Handhelds

Just following on from my post on Logos for Mac, it's worth mentioning another application that those into biblical scholarship might be interested in.

The Sword Project has the following mission:

Its purpose is to create cross-platform open-source tools, covered by the GNU General Public License, that allow programmers and Bible societies to write new Bible software more quickly and easily. Its secondary purpose is to amass a library of Bibles and other Scripture-related texts that can be used by all SWORD Project-based software.

I've used the Mac and Linux versions. The Mac version is my main Bible for preparing studies and searching for key texts. It'd be nice to have a version that works with Logos but coming at the perfect price (free) and with a wealth of different public domain resources including Bible translations, dictionaries and commentaries it's definitely worth a look.

 Bible • Sword Project

As a theology student (I'm at Ridley College in Melbourne) one of the tasks I regularly face is research. Finding articles for specific topics or for when I'm running a Bible study can be quite tricky. While the index in the back of the book is handy, having to trawl through the indexes of many books is very time consuming and is pre-supposed on the idea that I know what book the information I'm after is in. That's where e-Books come to the fore.

Many theological reference books are now available on CDs or DVDs. A substantial subset of those books are published in a specific format so that a common front-end can be used to access the entire library and then search across the library. Windows users have had access to the Libronix software for some time. However, Mac users have only recently been able to enter the fray with the release of Logos Bible Software for the Macintosh. Logos for Mac is currently in its first public beta release following no less that 11 alpha releases.

I've been using Logos for Mac since the last couple of alpha releases and now have the beta installed. The beta does have some limitations. For example, you can only install and access books that you have already unlocked using the Windows version of the software. This feature will be implemented in the final release.

The heart of Logos for Mac (the icon on the Dock is labelled as Libronix DLS) is the Library. this is where all the books in your electronic library are listed. At installation, you can choose where to store the books. If hard disk space is at a premium you could store your books on a USB stick. I chose to put mine in a specific folder in the Documents folder on my Mac (a MacBook Air running OS X 10.5.4). I'd previously purchased the The Essential IVP Reference Collection and BST New Testament CD-ROM [Affiliate Links] and installed them to a Mac running VMWare Fusion. That meant that I'd generated a license file that unlocked the resources in my library. Until the final release of Logos for Mac comes out, you'll need a system running Windows.

From my Windows installation, I synchronised my licenses with the Logos license server. When I ran through the Mac installation, I synchronised my licenses from the license server to my Mac. If I add any new books to my library I'll need to do that on my Windows set up first and then sync the licenses.

The proof of the pudding with software such as Logos is in the speed with which search results come back. I must say that I was very impressed. I was writing an essay on the teaching of the apostle James on wealth and poverty. The various queries I ran all returned their results quickly in a list that was categorised by book. A "by rank" sort option for search results didn't seem to make any difference but this is a beta so i don't expect everything to be working perfectly yet.

Reading a book on the screen was surprisingly good. Many people much prefer to be able to hold a book and flick the pages but some of the books, particularly many of the volumes in the The Essential IVP Reference Collection[Affiliate Link] are very large and a little unwieldy as bed-time reads go. However, the Libronix document/database format makes it easy to jump to specific sections using the book's table of contents. It'd be nice if the font that the book was displayed in could be changed but that's a minor issue as the serif font that's employed is pretty good.

If you're working on an essay or sermon and have opened a number of different reference works and need to stop working for a while, you can save a workspace easily so that you can return and keep working from where you left off.

I love books. I have a reasonably extensive library of fiction and non-fiction at home. However, for study, electronic books hold huge advantages over paper. For Mac users that are studying theology I'd strongly suggest looking at some of the electronic options that are available. Logos for Mac ought to be on your shopping list.

 Bible Study • Libronix • Logos

Well, it's been almost a week since I took delivery of my MacBook Air and I'm pretty happy. Despite all the reviews panning it when it was released I've not encountered any of the hassles those so-called experts said that I would. The thing is, the MacBook Air is as much as desktop replacement as the Eee PC. In other words, the MacBook Air is designed to be an accessory system. My main work system is a 20" iMac. The MacBook Air covers me for email, browsing and creating a few docs.

The problem is - there aren't very many decent MacBook Air specific accessories. There are plenty of cases for 13" notebooks but most are quite chunk - obviously designed for larger notebooks that are an inch or more thick. For the odd occasion where a USB hub would be handy where are the nice aluminium-look, slim line models? A Google for "MacBook Air accessories" doesn't reveal anything special.

The only case I've seen that I've liked is this one from Mac Case.

If you're one of my regular readers or a reseller that has some ideas for MacBook Air accessories that I should review or look at send me an email at anthony at pocketmojo dot net or reply to this thread.

 MacBook Air • MacBook Air accessories

As the proud owner of a new MacBook Air I decided that i would start with a clean slate. Typically, I use the Migration Assistant to move all my applications and data from my old Mac to the new one. This is super easy but does bring some baggage - namely all the junk I've accumulated. So, this time I decided to start with a clean slate.

I cloned my MacBook Pro using SuperDuper and figured I could install applications manually to the MacBook Air and move my data to the Air as needed. I figured that I'd need to run Software Update to get all the Apple apps patched to the most recent versions and expected to do the same with Microsoft Office 2008. The Mac part of the updating went smoothly.

Microsoft Office 2008, on the other hand, was truly painful. After installing the software, i ran the update tool and downloaded the 150MB update. After that installed and all was well, I ran the updater again - just in case. There was another 150MB+ update. That's just dumb. Surely they could roll them together. So, another 30 minutes later I figured that i was done. But no, there was a third 150MB+ update to go.

The the folks at the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft- fix this up. Make a combo updater and make it available through your software update tool. Needing to run the updater three times is not acceptable.

 MacBook Air • Microsoft Office 2008

Over the last couple of months my computing needs have changed further. I've spent many hours with the Eee PC, both the 700 and 900 series models, and reckon that the new form factor they've pioneered, the netbook, has a definite place in the IT market. For me, the two major shortcomings of the Eee PC, screen and keyboard size, were too much for me to overcome.

Hence, I've sold my MacBook Pro and shifted to a MacBook Air. There are plenty of nay-sayers when it comes to Air's combination of hardware and features. Common rants are the lack of ethernet, just one USB port, the hardwired battery and lack of an optical drive. However, I'm not seeing the Air as my main computer - it's an accessory to my main system, the 20" iMac at home.

A few weeks ago, I thought that the Eee PC 900 might do the job but I kept hitting the same brick wall - the keyboard. Trying to type 1000 words on the small keyboard was just too hard for me. Perhaps others are more patient and can train themselves to be more accurate (my mate Gus is one such person).

So, I've gone for the MacBook Air. I know that my familiarity and preference for the Mac OS is part of the decision but the compromises that the Air makes are ones that I can live with. The ones made by the Eee PC were not compromises I could work around in the long term. Also, the Macbook Air is only slightly heavier that the

I'm sure I'll have more to say about the Air in due course as this is a journey that's only just started.

Sorry for the lack of posting action lately. To say I've been bust would be an understatement. I have been working though with some stuff popping up on various web sites like this:

iPhone Apps Mean Business[Australian Macworld]: Apple is making a push for corporate mindshare. In order for the iPhone 3G to succeed in that space third-party developers need to fill the gaps that Apple has left in the iPhone's armour. FileMagnet and Stage Hand are two apps that help bridge the gap between consumer toy and business tool.

Does the operating system matter anymore? [Hydrapinion]: Respected IT writer Jerry Pournelle recently said that he is "rapidly concluding that given powerful enough hardware the operating system becomes irrelevant". Although he was speaking in context of desktop/laptop computing I reckon the premise applies to mobile devices.

Just to top things off, I also had to write an essay on the teachings of the apostle James on wealth and poverty for my theology degree.

 iPhone • iPhone Apps • Mobility

This time it's the AOC Rivio 22in TFT 2230Fm monitor.

Bright and shiny, the AOC Rivio 2230Fm LCD backs up its elegant appearance with great performance.

You can read all the details at APC's web site.

One day soon, I'll blog about something other than a review or story I've posted elsewhere!

 AOC • Monitors • Review

Over at Hydrapinion, I punched out a short story on some iPhone hits and misses.

Stop by for a read.

 iPhone

Tomorrow night (6 Aug 2008) I'll be giving a presentation on the basics of Podcasting for the Melbourne PC User Group.

Here's the skinny on what I'll be saying and doing:

Podcasting - how do you get it, and how to you make one?
We've all heard of podcasting and have maybe downloaded the occasional radio talk. But how do you get it to simply download TV shows and how do you create a podcast of your own? Some of our members are experts, and some are trying to catch up. Well here's a very well-received talk by one of our own experts, Anthony Caruana. We guarantee you'll learn something you didn't know!

It should be lots of fun. I've not been to many Melb PC meetings but I have been to a few. The audiences are very switched on and ask good questions.

If you can make it, it's be good to see you! The details are:

Melbourne PC User Group Monthly Meeting
Deakin University
Lecture Theatre 1, Building I. Deakin University
221 Burwood Highway, Burwood.
7:00 pm Sharp.

If you plan to come, the actual venue is deep within the university grounds so allow a few extra minutes to find it as it can be quite tricky.

 Melbourne PC User Group • Podcasting • Presentations

I've just popped this news story up at Australian Macworld. Australia's largest telco, Telstra, has boosted their anaemic iPhone plans to offer decent amounts of data by local standards.

Telstra has finally relented and is now offering greatly improved, although in no way market leading, data plans for all its NextG customers including iPhone users.

 iPhone • Telstra

I've started writing for The Age - one of Melbourne's daily newspapers. My story on NAS units and backing up data is in the Green Guide lift-out and online as well.

 Backup • NAS • Storage

Over at Australian Macworld, editor Matthew JC Powell says the following in a recent story:

Imagine, for a moment, an e-mail program that doesn't allow you to search for past messages you've received except by flicking through the list and hoping you don't miss one. Imagine not having the facility to mark messages as read so they don't irritate you with notifications, except by reading them. Imagine not having the ability to have all your messages in one unified inbox except by forwarding mail from your other accounts to that one — meaning that if you also want to have mail going where it's meant to go you have to receive everything twice

After over a week of using my iPhone I have to agree - there are many things that Apple's iPhone does really well but email isn't one of them. I'd go a couple of steps further. Apple has bragged about the iPhone running OS X. Not some half-arsed stripped back mobile OS but a proper desktop OS that's been scaled to run on smaller screens with different input. However, they've left out some things that users expect from any operating system.

1 - Selecting text: Why can't I drag my finger over some text to highlight so I can delete it or copy/paste? And that brings me to Issue Number 2.

2 - Cut, copy and paste: Why can't I take some text I wrote in one place and copy or move it to another? That's plain dumb.

3 - An accessible file system: Why can't I store a few documents in a folder? At the moment, the only way I can do this is to email documents to myself. There's a proper OS under there - why can't I use it?

Here's the thing - it's really frustrating to use something that is clearly very well made and delivers on so many fronts but misses on a really fundamental feature. With the Microsoft Exchange support it's clear that Apple is aiming its sights on the lucrative corporate market. However, they'll not usurp RIM and Microsoft from the pockets of mobile execs until they get these basics right.

Over at hydrapinion, I've punched out a story on my iPhone observations.

Stop by for a read.

Here's another little iPhone story I've penned over at Australian Macworld. This one's about Apple's little "secret" - many iPod accessories won't work with the iPhone 3G.

Now that I have my iPhone 3G I'm somewhat stunned at the fact that many of my iPod accessories are now either nobbled in some way or completely useless.

 iPhone 3G

It took me an extra week to track one down but I finally have an iPhone of my own. I had held out mainly because the extra cost over my current handset wasn't justified but having sold a couple of iPhone stories to some local magazines and selling my Nokia N95 handset has turned the benefit case around so that I've effectively achieved payback on the cost difference from my old deal.

I've gone for a white 16GB unit as I don't think the white will show fingerprints up as much as the black. I've got a 16GB iPod touch and find that less storage would not be a good thing for me. The games and apps I downloaded or purchased for the iPod touch synced across painlessly so it didn't take long for the iPhone to be fully functional for me.

I was porting my number from another carrier. I should make it clear that I've been really happy with Three. However, not being an iPhone carrier and their roaming arrangements for data (if you fall out of Three's 3G area you roam on Telstra's GPRS which as well as being slower costs a king's ransom to use) have tipped me over. Furthermore, Three (or Telstra or Vodafone) don't have network coverage at my home. Optus has coverage at my home.

Activation was quite fast an painless. Stan at MyMac Australia had set up my account and ported my number in less that 20 minutes. If you're planning to port a number from another carrier when you get you iPhone I suggest that you make sure you bring an old phone bill with the account number as that makes the transition process much faster.

I've not yet made or received a call but I have received SMS and it seems that the email features are working as advertised despite the many teething issues MobileMe is facing. A MobileMe update was released by Apple and appeared on one of my Macs via Software Update. I can't spot it on Apple's support pages and it's not appearing in Software update on my MacBook Pro so I'm not too sure what's happening there.

In any case, iPhone Mojo now has its own official iPhone and is battling Super Monkeyball addiction.

 iPhone

While I've not been blogging I have been penning stories for a number of magazines and online publications over the last few days.

Over at Australian Macworld, I've penned this story on how the iPhone has shaken the mobile market.

More interesting, in our view, is the number of downloads from the App Store — ten million on the opening weekend. Now that's a market change worth looking at.

APC has popped a few more of my reviews up covering three different product categories; routers, NAS and mobile Internet.

Billion BiPAC 7300N: a good all-round modem: Billion's BiPAC 7300N is packed with enough features to support the needs of almost every home or small office user.

Three Internet Key: hassle free mobile internet: Three's Internet Key is dead easy to set up and delivers great performance.

SMC Wireless Barricade N Gigabit Router: fit the internet in your pocket: How does SMC try to stand out from the crowded router marketplace? With a great all-round router that includes scanner sharing.

LaCie 2big network 2-bay NAS: 2TB of 'safe' storage: LaCie's 2big network ticks the right boxes for perfomance, looks and ease of use.

Thecus N3200 Home NAS: securely store and deliver data: Made with the home user in mind, the Thecus N3200 NAS ticks all the boxes.

Linksys WRT310N Wireless-N Broadband Router: now with added gigabit: The Linksys WRT310N builds on the success of the WRT160N.

Happy reading.

 3G • HSDPA • Internet • iPhone • NAS • Router

Even though I'm writing this for iPhone Mojo (part of the pocket Mojo family) you'll notice that I've largely ignored the iPhone 3G hype cycle. Frankly, there's not much I can add to the enromous chatter in the blogosphere. Given that the iPhone 3G was announced weeks ago and Apple seeded a few units to the media under NDA, the hardware story has been done to death.

The real story in Australia are the appalling data plans being spewed forth. I'm going to suggest that 1GB will be a reasonable data allowance for someone planning to do a reasonable volume of web browsing, receives about 50 emails per day and might use some other web services such an RSS reader that they update a couple of times per day.

Telstra's data plans can be found here. I find it hard to beleive that Telstra will be charging $89 for 1GB of data (you'll need to add a call plan and, potentially, an up-front purchase fee). WiFi browsing at Telstra hotspots is included at no charge.

Optus' plans are better but will need to either look at the $149 monthly cap (that includes a generous allowance for phone calls) or $99 per month with a lower call allowance. You can buy an iPhone on Pre-Paid with an upfront payment of either $729 or $849. Thisd includes $400 of credit that can be topped up on demand. For an extra $80 the handset can be unlocked and used with any carrier. WiFi browsing at Optus hotspots is supported but there are fewer than Telstra have.

Vodafone's iPhone offering is the one that totally baffles me. Frankly, I expect telstra to gouge the price and Optus to be not far behind but I epxcted Vodafone to be far more agressive with its pricing., To get 1GB of data you'll need a monthly outlay of $169. This includes a 8GB handset. A 16GB iPhone adds another $3.71 per month.

The one carrier in Australia that's not at the iPhone party is Three. It'sd a shame when you consider that their Mobile Internet packs offer 1GB for $15. Add that to a $29 monthly cap and $30 per month for the handset and about $75 could deliver a decent iPhone package.

 iPhone 3G pricing

Telstra, Austrlaia's largest mobile phone network, is one of Apple's iPhone resellers. They've announced their data plans with the cheapest iPhone option offering 5 MB (no, that's not a typo).

To put that into context I loaded a couple of my regular websites up and lloked at what sort of traffic they would count. The Age and APC Mag each counted for about 300K of traffic. The Age automatically refreshes every few minutes meaning that it's conceivable that the entire 5 MB allowance in just a few minutes.

I know that they're offering free WiFi but it's hardly ubiquitous in Australia.

Also, the Twitterverse is suggesting that Telstra's NextG network is almost maxed out already so the potential for full speed NextG may be limited.

 iPhone 3G • Telstra

I don't often use PocketMojo to proselytise or rant but I'm compelled to do so today. iPhone 3G reviews are starting to flow now that the NDA has lapsed and the phrase "Jesus Phone" is being thrown around as if it isn't highly offensive and blasphemous.

If you're a journalist, blogger or any other commentor on the iPhone:

STOP CALLING THE IPHONE THE "JESUS PHONE"

Would you call it the "Allah Phone" or "Buddha Phone"? It seems that mocking Christianity is OK but other religions are off limits. We may not all share the same beliefs but that's not an excuse to mock the beleifs of others.

In case you missed it the first time:

STOP CALLING THE IPHONE THE "JESUS PHONE"

Thanks

I really should check into where my material is published more closely. I tracked down a couple of other reviews, this time of routers, at APC Pro.

Linksys RV042 and robust routing all-rounder: The RV042 from Linksys is your basic router that will find a good home in many small offices and home offices all over the country.

LevelOne WBR-6000 - Great Wireless Range: The LevelONe WBR-6000 is a a router that offers excellent wireless range.

 LevelOne • Linksys • Router reviews

Another review of mine has popped up. This time at APCPro.com. This is the sister site to APC Magazine and is intended for "accidental IT managers".

Thecus N5200: The Thecus N5200's spec sheet reads more like a PC than a drive enclosure. But that's because the N5200 is a sophisticated piece of hardware.

 Thecus N5200

Here's the thing - I'm carry a MacBook Pro mainly to deal with email and document creation. It's definitely overkill. When I first got the macBook Pro it was my main computer. However, the need to store my iTunes library on an external drive and the desire to share the library with the rest of the family lead me to an iMac.

I like the idea of the MacBook Air for when I travel but the price is too high and I reckon it's too big. I know it's super-thin but the footprint is still large (for me). There some cheaper MacBook Airs on Apple's refurb store (a great place to buy a Mac on the cheap with full warranty as long as you handle not getting the original packaging).

I've purchased a couple of Eee PCs (for a particular project I'm working on - can't say too much) and while I think the 700's 7" screen is too small and the resolution under a workable minimum, the 9" 900 model overcomes those shortfalls. My 9" is running XP and thus far it's proven to be fast and stable. Yeah - I know it's not OS X but for email and docs it's good enough.

I wish Apple's licensing allowed OS X to run on the 9" or 10" Eee PC it could prove a truly butt-kicking solution. Better yet - if Apple made a 9" or 10" sub notebook with integrated 3G they'd have the folding stuff escaping from the moth farm in seconds.

I suspect that Apple's solution will be some sort of slate-style computer - like a Super Newton. However, I doubt that it'll hit the market at under $500AUD. You see, at that price it becomes practically disposable. If it's dropped, lost or stolen I'm not going to get too upset. If the same happens to a MacBook Pro or Air I'm sure that some tears will be shed.

What do you think?

 Eee PC • MacBook Pro

Now, I may look like a mild-mannered blogger but in my ever diminishing spare time I'm also the Home Networking Editor for APC Magazine.

Three more of my reviews have popped up in recent days.

Three Internet Key: hassle free Wi-Fi: Three's Internet Key is dead easy to set up and delivers great performance.

Billion BiPAC 7300N: a good all-round modem: Billion's BiPAC 7300N is packed with enough features to support the needs of almost every home or small office user.

Billion BiPAC 5200N: Billion's BiPAC 5200N is a competent router let down by some tricky set up issues.

All three reviews are make for fascinating reading and mus tbe bookmarked, Slashdotted and Digged (Dugg?) in order to make sure I can continue putting food on my family's table.

 Billion • Networking • Router • Three

Today is my first day of working exclusively from the Eee PC. It has been a long time since I've spent a work day without using my regular laptop but I figured that the only way to be able to make a decision about the Eee PC's appropriateness as a supplementary system. Certainly, the Eee PC isn't suitable as a primary computer but as a supplement to a decent desktop/home-base system it's worth looking at.

My Kit for the Day

In order to get through the day there were a number of accessories I needed to pull together so that my Eee PC 701 was usable as a serious business tool for a day. Here's the list

• Asus Eee PC 701 (obviously) with its power pack
• Proporta Gadget Bag
• Huawei E220 modem on the Three data network
• A clutch of USB memory sticks (I usually have three or four on hand)
• My Moleskine notebook and Fisher Space Pen (just in case)
• A Google account

The Day

My work day started with my daily commute to Melbourne's CBD on the train. The carriage was particularly packed today and, although I got a I was stuck between two largish gents. I managed to extract the Eee PC, connect the modem and fire up an Internet connection. I altered my Gmail account so that it's collecting all my POP3 email sources. That means that I can use Firefox(here's how I upgraded).

At work, I used a USB stick to copy a bunch of files I needed for the day's work to the Eee PC. This is probably a one-off activity as there's enough storage on the Eee PC to hold the documents I need.

The main operational issue I'm facing is the screen resolution. I'm finding that the 800 pixel width means there's lots of side scrolling in Firefox and when reading documents. I suspect that even with a 7” screen that a higher resolution would make the Eee PC 701 fr more usable.

The other, less critical, issue is font quality. I've not found a font smoothing option for the Eee PC running Xandros. This is especially problematic when using reading slabs of text. Does anyone know of a solution?

Battery life in a day of real use was reasonable but still a little thin. Three hours was good with the 3G modem constantly active but with WiFi turned off. In an ideal world I'd like to get closer to six hours off a single charge. Hopefully, a decent third party or extended battery option will come to light soon.

Can I Sell the Laptop?

I'm wondering whether I really need my MacBook Pro. Certainly, it's a far more capable computer with a great display, full-sixed keyboard and a plethora of applications. However, the Eee PC is far more portable and doesn't stop me from doing most of my day to day tasks.

I still need a decent PIM application s I don't like the supplied Organizer application and I'd prefer to not use a solution that requires a web connection like Google Calendar. I still need to do some investigation for a better solution.

The same goes for email – Gmail is OK but I prefer an offline application. Thunderbird is competent and I will need to give it a decent run. My problem is that I have a lot of folders and intelligence built into my installation of Apple's Mail.app. I'm going to need to find a way to deal with that.

The display is small but as an email reader and tool for occasional document creation it's OK. The keyboard takes some getting used to. Initially, I kept hitting the “s” instead of the “a” and find that my hands get a little sore if I type for more than about 30 minutes at a time. However, that's not something that happens often.

I'm not quite ready to give up my laptop yet. I really like the idea of the Eee PC but, and this about my capacity to change my work habits, there are many compromises. I wonder how many of these are about the form factor and how many are due to how the Eee PC's OS, Xandros, does things. I'm going to try to work mainly from the Eee PC again tomorrow and use the desktop for my main work.

 Asus • Eee PC • Xandros

The Huawei e220 is probably the most popular mobile broadband on the planet. Many carriers across the globe use the Huawei E220 and the hardware is supported on just about every platform in common use. I've used it with Windows and mac systems and it passes the "just works" test. But what about the Eee PC?

It turns out that using the e220 with an Eee PC is trivially easy. In fact, it's been one of the easiest tasks I've had to negotiate as I learn more and more about the Eee PC and Linux.

The starting point, for me, was the discovery of the eee220 Mobile Broadband Tool that can be downloaded from the 3epc User Portal.

Installation was simply a matter of downloading the application's DEB package, right-clicking the downloaded file and installing the software. That took a mere 30 seconds or so.

Once the installation was done, I plugged my e220 in and followed the prompts to create a connection using the Eee PC's own wizard. At the end of it all, I had an icon on the Internet tab of the Easy Mode screen and a "3G" icon in the system tray in Desktop Mode.

[If you don't know about Full Desktop Mode this tutorial might be of assistance]

Plugging the E220 into the USB port automatically launched the connection software. Click the "Connect" button (the one with the stylised globe of the earth and plug) and you're online.

What you need

• Eee PC (I tried this with the 701)
• Huawei E220
• Contract with your comms carrier and a SIM card from them for the E220 (I use Three in Australia)
• eee220 Mobile Broadband Tool from the 3epc User Portal

 3G • Asus Eee PC • Huawei E220

I've been a long time fan of mobile broadband services. Like regular, in-home broadband I think I was one of the earliest adopters amongst my friends and peers. However, the hardware I've used for connection has been largely determined by my service provider and the specific modems they offer with the particular deal. What that's meant is that my hardware decision has been out of my hands.

The market has changed recently with many carriers, at least in Australia, letting customers mix and match their hardware and data needs. I've tested three different mobile broadband modems. All the tests were carried out in exactly the same location, on the same computer with the same carrier. the only thing that has changed is the modem.

The Test Environment

I've chosen three different modems. They are

1. Novatel Wireless XU870 Express Card


2. Huawei E220 USB


3. Huawei E169G

Testing mobile broadband services can be a little tricky. For that reason I've chosen to use SpeedTest.Net. I know that it's not perfect but it's an easy way to do a controlled test where the only variable changing is the hardware.

All testing was done using an Apple MacBook Pro running OS X 10.5.4

Outcomes - the Numbers

I must say that the outcomes of my testing were a little surprising. I expected that the ExpressCard product would offer the best performance but that honour went to the Huawei E169G - branded as the Internet Key by Three. It was able to consistently deliver downloads of about 1000 kbps and uploads around the 320 kbps mark.

The Huawei E220, probably the most most popular 3G modem on the planet, delivered similar upload speed but slightly lower download performance with speeds consistently around the 900 kbps mark.

Coming in at around the 800 kbps mark was the Novatel XU870. Consistently, my testing rated this the slowest at downloads but the equal of its rivals in uploads. I'm at a bit of a loss as to why this might be so I'm putting it down to some sort of software anomaly. Given that signal strength atmy test location, in Melbourne's CBD, was very similar with each device I don't think that my finding is due to signal reception.

Outcomes - Ease of Use

One of the factors to consider when buying your mobile modem is its form factor. This is where the XU870 and E169G stand apart from the E220. The E220 requires a USB cable to connect to your computer - the others either slide into an ExpressCard slot or connect directly to the USB port.

However, one of the great things about the E220 is its ubiquity - it'll work with just about any computer and operating system. I've even got it running with my Asus Eee PC. The E169G is also very easy to use as it ships with Windows and Mac drivers on the flash memory within the modem. that means it can be installed to a new system in minutes without the need to carry a CD of drivers.

The XU870 offers convenience through its form factor. It only protrudes from the computer's ExpressCard slot but a couple of centimetres making it great for working in confined spaces such as on public transport. However, installation requires drivers that need to be loaded from a CD or some other media.

Which would I buy?

If I had to buy one of these units today, it'd would be a toss-up between the E220 and the E169G (I actually own a XU870) as they offer the greatest flexibility. Every computer has at least one USB port whereas ExpressCard slots are still a little thin on the ground.

The e220 has the annoying "dangling off the side" thing happening but it'll work on practically any computer. The E169G doesn't need a driver CD or extra cable but I worry that it could be bent or snapped when plugged into the side of a notebook.

My final decision is the Huawei E220 - but only just.

 3G • E169G • E220 • Huawei • Modem • XU870

Over at Hydrapinion, I've penned a short post on Nokia's purchase of the remaining stock in Symbian.

Stop by for a read.

 Mobility • Nokia • Symbian

After opening with a meager ration of TV shows last week, my friend Angus Kidman has broken the story that Australians will be able to buy movies over the iTunes Store next month.

This is good news for Australians and even better news for iiNet customers as the downloads will be unmetered meaning that they won't be counted towards any download caps.

 Australia • iTunes • Movies

Following on from announcements by Optus and Vodafone and Three begging for customers Australia's other telco, Telstra has announced, somewhat surprisingly that they'll be selling the iPhone from 11 July.

Unlike the other carriers, Telstra has announced pricing.

8 GB - $279 up front and $30 per month OR $0 and $80 per month
16 GB - $399 up front and $30 per month OR $0 and $100 per month

In addition, Telstra's customers will have free access to Telstra's extensive WiFi hotspot network that covers significant parts of Australia's capital cities with access from every McDonalds restaurant, airport and other locations.

Telstra will NOT be selling unlocked iPhones and customers will be bound to their two-yar contracts. In contrast, Optus has said that they'll sell the iPhone unlocked.

One thing's certain - Telstra's announcement will setthe cat amongst the pigeons. While Optus and Vodafone are being coy about pricing and other details, Telstra has thrown down the gauntlet. The good news is that Optus and Vodafone will need to up the ante to compete.

My feeling is that Vodafone will respond with two year contracts with $0 up front and $49 per month with a data allowance of about 2GB. Optus will probably come in reasonably close to Telstra with perhaps more generous allowances within pricing caps.

The wild caard in all of this is Three. Despite being the last to come to an arrangement (at least one they're prepared to disclose) they have a reputation for delivering great value and not being scared to undercut the opposition. Already, they've announced more generous call and data allowances for current customers on capped plans.

 iPhone • Telstra

Over at Australian Macworld, I've filed a news story on what must be the most bizarre iPhone story. Local carrier Three is asking customers to petition them so that they can put some pressure on Apple to become one of Apple's sales partners.

Here's the story.

 iPhone • Three

Firstly, welcome to any visitors who have found your way here from Lifehacker or any of the other sites that linked to my recent post on Getting Started with the Eee PC.

One of the other sites i contribute to is a venture called Hydrapinion where me and four other journalists take a turn at writing about a favourite subject each week. My beat is called "Carry" where I cover mobility related topics.

My post at Hydrapinon this week covers my continuing journey of discovery with the Eee PC and Linux. It follows on from a piece I wrote the week before where I suggested that Linux has some substantial issues that need to be addressed before it's really "consumer ready'.

 Eee PC • Linux

With no fanfare Apple has opened a new new aisle in the iTunes Store. Australian customers can finally access episodes of some of their favourite TV shows.

Popular American imports Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives are there as well as Bit Torrent favourite Lost. Local productions from Channel 9, McLeod's Daughters, Sea Patrol II and Canal Road are also available with the ABC represented with Chris Lilley classics We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High there as well. That's interesting as those shows were freely available from the ABC when screened through their vodcast service.

There's plenty for the kids as well with Blues Clues, Hannah Montana and Cory in the House.

The full list of shows is

Blues Clues
Canal Road
Cory in the House
Desperate housewives
Double the Fist
Foreign Correspondents Postcards
Grey's Anatomy
Hannah Montana
Laguna Beach
Lost
McLeod's Daughters
My Super Sweet Sixteen
Pimp my Ride
Scrubs
Sea Patrol: The Coup
Sleek Geeks
South Park
Summer Heights High
Surfing the Menu
The Hills
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
Urban Magic
We Can Be Heroes

Individual episodes are priced at $2.99 - that's a hefty premium on the US prices of $1.99USD. Full series cost start at around $40 but range up to over $60. Depending on what you're after it may be cheaper to buy the DVD. All the series available are complete so there's no sign that we'll be able to download episodes the day after they air as it the US practice. A look at a current series such as Sea Patrol II shows that you can download all the current episodes for $17.94 (the cost of the six individual episodes that are available) even though the series is intended to run for 13 episodes.

OK - so it's not as good as the US store but it's a start.

 Apple • iTunes • TV

Now that I'm getting the hang of installing apps on the Eee PC (I still maintain that it's too hard but that's an old rant) I'm looking at a few apps to make the Eee PC even better.

The installed browser, Firefox 2, is competent enough but it's a little long in the tooth. After a little research I've settled on two candidates - Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5. Here are my impressions.

Opera 9.5

Installation was dead easy with Opera coming in a deb package that installs simply. The main trick was to download the correct version - the one for Xandros 1.0 and 1.1. The version for Versions 2 or above didn't work for me.

Once it was installed, I imported my Firefox bookmarks and was up and running in a few short minutes.

Browsing was definitely faster than with Firefox 2. The user interface is very clean with the default theme making a nice change from the regular grey/blue toolbar arrangement.

Tabbed browsing works nicely although I was annoyed that my favoured Ctrl-Click on links for new tabs opened the new tabs in front of the current tab with no option (that I could find) to open new tabs behind the current one unless I used the right click and selected the appropriate option from the context menu. However, this is a small complaint and not a showstopper for me.

Given the Eee PC's limited screen resolution, one of the key factors in any Eee PC browser is its ability to zoom and deal with wide web pages. Using the Ctrl-Minus and Ctrl+Plus keystrokes, it's easy to increase and decrease the size of pages with text and graphics scaling in 10% increments.

You can download Opera from the Opera Download page.

Firefox 3

Firefox 3 is a sensational browser. It's fast, offers good zoom for pages exceeding the Eee PC's display width and offers a familiar look and feel.

I know this will draw the ire of some quarters but without this excellent guide at Eeeuser I'd never had got it up and running. I needed to install the GTK 2 library (whatever the heck that is!), edit a script file and enter a bunch of commands in a terminal window.

Once it was installed, Firefox 3 was excellent to use.The page zoom in and out feature worked well.

Where Firefox beat Opera was its ability to render pages nicely. If you take a close look at the screen grab from Opera and compare it to Firefox, you'll notice that Firefox does a much nicer job of rendering fonts.

Conclusions

At the end of the day there are a couple of things that web browsers have to do. These are render pages correctly and be easy to use. At the end of the day, Firefox, while a little less refined in its default appearance (in my opinion) is certainly easy to use and it is better at rendering pages.

While Firefox was a pain to install I don't expect that it's a task I'll need to repeat often.

So, the winnder is Firefox 3 but not by a lot.

 Eee PC • Firefox 3 • Opera

I recently purchased an Eee PC 4G (the model with a 7" display and 4GB of memory) on the cheap. My intent was to look at it for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I viewing it as a tool to help me in my study. In this guise, I'd use it for accessing the Bible (I'm studying theology) and for note taking. This means that I'd need to be able to install some extra software (there are several open source Bible study applications around that use public domain translations of the Bible) and type on it.

Secondly, I plan to use it for occasional web surfing and email access.. That's where the WiFi connection and, hopefully, 3G and Bluetooth support would be handy.

Thirdly, I attend a lot of meetings in my day job and I prefer to not carry printed papers to meetings. My preference is to take PDF or other documents with me as they're easy to annotate on the fly and my comments are kept with the original documents.

Finally, the built-in sound recording software was appealing as I could use it while interviewing folks and while at meetings and conferences.

After a couple of days of use I was totally frustrated - enough to use my soapbox at Hydrapinion for a rant titled "Eee PC proves why Linux blows". You see, installing extra applications to the Eee PC is a pain and, if you manage to install one, getting it to appear on the Eee's Easy Menu is something of a black art. Yeah, I know I can look to installing another operating system (there are several Linux distros focussed on the Eee PC and there are ways to install Mac OS X (don't bother, I did it and it was 20 minute experiment that on the 7: screen wasn't worth the effort) or Windows XP (you'll need a legitimate copy of XP SP2 for it work) but why should I have to do that to do, what on the face of things, looks to be a reasonably simple task.

Here's what I learned. Some of this will be dead obvious to those experienced in the use of Linux but given that the Eee PC isn't pitched specifically at Linux users but at consumer electronics customers after a low-cost computer, I think they're worth noting. Also, none of this stuff is my own work. I'll credit, where I can find them, the original sources of what I learned.

Starting the Terminal

Like it or not, getting the most out of Linux requires some access to the Terminal (Windows users would call this a DOS box or Command Prompt). The Eee PC's Easy Menu doesn't have a shortcut for launching the Terminal so you'll need to remember a keyboard shortcut.

To launch the Terminal press Ctrl+Alt+T

Enabling Desktop Mode

The Easy Mode, with it's large icons is great for quickly finding and launching applications. However, many would prefer a more usual desktop system. That's why you might like to enable the Full Desktop mode.

To enable Full Desktop mode

1 - Start a Terminal
2 - Enter the following commands

sudo bash
apt-get update
apt-get install ksmserver kicker

Note: When you run something commencing with "sudo", you're running it with full system access. Whatever you run as "sudo" will have access to the entire system. That means, if you don't know what you're doing, you can accidentally mess your system up quite badly.

Exit the Terminal (just type "exit") and then restart your Eee PC.

Now, when you press the power button, you'll have a button to run the Full Desktop, in addition to usual Stand By, Restart and Shut Down options.

As the Eee PC runs a version of the Linux distribution called Xandros that has a very strong resemblance to Windows XP. For many people, Full Desktop might be a more familiar experience and a preferred way of working. You can boot to the Full Desktop automatically by enabling it as a permanent option by going to Settings -> Personalisation and checking the Full Desktop option.

Source: My main source for this information was Eeeuser.org

Installing Applications

For Eee PC users, installing new applications is one of the confusing things they have to do. What makes it worse is that Easy Mode, even after a successful installation, doesn't provide easy access to the installed application.

In order to understand application installation I think a very short history lesson is in order. If you're a Windows or Mac user, you know that, even though new versions are released regularly, that the operating system is evolving in a single direction. Linux is different. Even though, many, many moons ago there was a single Linux, it's evolved so that there are several different types of Linux. Each type of Linux is called a distribution. Each different distribution has its own unique features.

What you need to know is that just because something works on one distribution Linux it doesn't necessarily mean that it'll work on all or any of the others. Now, the Eee PC runs a version of Xandros that's been customised for the Eee PC. Xandros is a Linux distribution that sprouted from Debian so what you find is that applications written for Xandros and Debian can usually work on the Eee PC.

I've had some success installing Debian applications

My operating system history starts at DOS 5 and Windows 3.0 and goes through all the flavours of Windows (except Windows ME thankfully). Also, I've been a Mac user for about five yearts so drag and drop installation is second nature. Essentially, that means that i'm used to running an installation package and having access to the installed application a few minutes later.

Linux is different as there are many ways to install applications. Firstly, you can download source code and compile it yourself. I have never done this and never expect to in my life. I won't be discussing this at all.

Secondly, you can run an application called Synaptic by going to the Terminal and entering the following.

sudo synaptic

This runs a program called Synaptic that makes program installation reasonably simple. Synaptic has a list of known program sources, called repositories, that are interrogated each time Synaptic is executed. This method works most of the time but is dependent on having enough "good" repositories in your list. There's a good article on how to do this over at eeeuser.com on how to do this along with a list of decent repositories.

If you're a Terminal or command line fan you can use the apt-get and install commands to install software. I'm not into the command line lifestyle so I'll point you to some clear instructions. Pop over to this page and scroll all the way to the bottom where the apt-get command is explained as well as how to use the command line to find software and to delete installed software.

My preferred method is to simply use Google. Search for the application type and find an installation that's distributed as a .deb file. For example, I installed the Opera web browser by visiting http://www.opera.com/download, choosing Xandros as my distribution and downloading Opera for Xandros 1.0 and 1.1 (the other version doesn't work on the Eee PC (or didn't for me).

By default, files download to the My Documents folder (you can launch the File Manager application from the Work tab of the Easy Menu - just in case you hadn't found that yet). Right click the downloaded .deb file and choose Install DEB file... from the menu. Then just follow the prompts and it's done

Running Applications

Having installed an application you'll want to actually use it. If you go to Full Desktop mode, you'll find you application under the Launch menu and looking through the Applications list. That's great if you're using the Full Desktop. If you're in Easy Mode it's a little trickier.

Open the File Manager. Go to the View menu and enable the "Show All File Systems" option. Expand the "All File Systems" branch of the file tree and then browse to "/usr/share/applications"

Note: file and folder names in Linux are case sensitive. That means that "usr" is different to "Usr".

From there, you can look through the list of installed programs to find your new applications.

Adding Applications to the Easy Mode Menu

The contents of the Easy Mode menu are managed, in typical Linux style, through a text file. This file is made up of structured content in an XML format. There's a tutorial on how to modify this using the Terminal and a text editor if you're so inclined. I'm not so I poked around, looking for a graphical tool that did this.

Go to the 3epc User Portal and download Launcher Tools. Install it (it comes in DEB package so you know how to do this) and a new icon, called "Launch Tools" appears on the Settings tab of the Easy Mode menu.

To add a new icon to the Easy Mode menu, launch the SimpleUI Editor. Choose the tab you wish to add your icon to (or add a new tab using the "Tab Management" option) and then right-click on some blank space to add a new program.

Given your new icon a name and then, in the "Command" section type the full path to the program you wish to launch from your new icon. For example, the path to Opera (on my system) is

/usr/share/applications/opera.desktop

Remember, this is case sensitive.

As you're entering it, text saying "Invalid Command" will appear below the command box. When you've entered a valid path, the text will automatically change to "Valid Command!" and be coloured green.

Creating your own custom icons is easy enough. There are excellent instructions and templates over at eeeuser.com. You can then use your own icons on the Easy Mode menu.

In closing...

One of the things I've learned over the last few days is that there's plenty of good information on using the Eee PC. However, most of it assumes some level of Linux knowledge. I've approached this form the point of view of the complete Linux newbie who's bought a consumer electronics device and wants to get a little more from it. Hence, I've not sought to do anything more technical than install some applications and add some icons so I can easily access the apps.

Incidentally, I've made considerable effort to not use anyone else's intellectual property in writing this post. Where an idea came from somewhere else I believe that I've credited it and provided some link love.

 Customising Eee PC • Eee PC • Eee PC Beginner • Linux

Another rweview on APC's site - this time it's storage with Iomega. You can catch the full review of the Iomega StorCenter Pro NAS 200r at APC.

Iomega has moved from the consumer market to business. The StorCenter Pro NAS 200r is a solid, if unspectacular, NAS.

I've been a little quieter than usual on the blogging front of late but that doesn't mean i've not been working. Here's a review of the Minitar MWNAPR-1 home router I recently penned for APC Magazine.

Minitar's MWNAPR-1 is a basic but unspectacular router that has great wireless range but doesn't do much else to raise its head above the pack.

I've written an opinion piece over at Hydrapinion about the Eee PC.

Let me start by saying that the Eee PC is a wonderful computer. Out of the box, it's easy to use and has almost all the apps one needs to be productive. My problem with the Eee PC, running Linux, is that installing software is a bitch.

Ok - so I've been a little provocative headlining the story "Eee PC proves why Linux blows" but I do offer some potential solutions to the issues. Hopefully the various Linux development communities can get together and sort out the mess.

 Eee PC • Linux • Linux blows

Over at Australian Macworld, I've popped up a review of the new Palm Centro.

Picture a company in the doldrums — innovation's lost and the market is anticipating the death knell to be sounded any moment now. If this were 1995 we'd be talking about Apple — but it's 2008 and it's Palm. However, the new Palm Centro might go some way to turning Palm's fortunes around.

 Palm • Palm Centro • Smartphone

My APC colleague Danny Gorog broke a story yesterday with screenshots from Aussie retailer Harvey Norman (under their Domayne brand) with unlocked iPhones seemingly to be sold for either $699 or $999. As Danny reported, the product numbers in the point of sale system seemed to be place holders (although using "666" might have been paying homage to the price of the original Mac).

Then, yesterday afternoon I posted a story about Melbourne reseller LineLink Data Communications and how they'd already undercut the reported Domayne pricing with offers of $775 na d$875 for the 8GB and 16GB units respectively.

It would seem that a price war has started even before a single sale has been made.

 Apple • iPhone

I recently reviewed the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ for APC Magazine and the review has appeared online.

Netgear's ReadNAS is a premium NAS for offices and homes. It packs features and performance that make it one of our favourite NAS boxes.

This one's on my list of favourite NAS boxes.

 NAS • Netgear • ReadyNAS • Storage

Australian broadband is, shall we say, crap! Unlike many other countries local pricing is governed by two facotrs (other than the greed of service providers!). These are

• Speed
• Traffic

As an example, my ISP allows me 7GB of traffic between midday and midnight and 14GB from midnight to midday (designated peak and off-peak periods respectively). Fortunately, only download traffic is counted as I'm on an old deal. Current deals count traffic in both directions.

However, the majority of customers have lower traffic allowances and slower connections. If they want more traffic they pay more. If they want faster, they pay more. All of this means that tracking your Internet usage is a big deal as using too much traffic can lead to "shaping" (where the connection is slowed down till the next billing cycle) or excess usage charges (some are exorbitant. There are reports of folks on 200MB connections getting bill for thousands of dollars when the grand-kids come and use P2P software and download a few GBs).

LemonJar, a local start-up, has created a series of widgets that make it easy to track Internet use from a variety of ISPs. I've been using one of their widgets for many months and it passes my "just works" test.

If you're ISP is supported, you need this widget!

 LemonJar • OS X • widgets

Apple's next big cat, Snow Leopard was announced but details are still quite thin. The official press release says:

“We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more,”

With the iPhone and MobileMe forming two parts of a strategy to sneak into offices, Snow Leopard delivers several features that will appeal to corporate IT providers.

For the first time, OS X includes native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal® and Address Book, making it even easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size.

Many of the the proposed improvements seems very technical to me. For example:

...support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named “Grand Central,” making it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs. Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard. Furthering OS X’s lead in 64-bit technology, Snow Leopard raises the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM.

In other words, Leopard delivered plenty of eye candy and user-centric features whereas Snow Leopard will lay a foundation for future developments. Given that it's at least a year away and that the benchmark results quoted in the press release are for an Intel Mac I'd not be surprised to see Power PC support dropped for this and future releases.

 Apple • OS X Snow Leopard

Optus, one of the Australian carriers that'll definitely be selling the iPhone 3G Down Under, is letting current and new customers sign up for a place in a queue for an iPhone.

Pop over to their sign-up site to join the queue.

Here's the kicker - there's no word on pricing or contracts and you'll need to pay a $100 "holding deposit". So, for a place in the queue, you pay $100, Optus gets to pocket the interest on that cash, you potentially pay credit card interest on the $100 (seems it's just a credit authorisation and not an actual payment) and there's no promise of a delivery date.

A fool and his money are soon parted (Thomas Tusser).

 iPhone 3G • Optus

Waking up this morning in Australia meant that the morning news included some, limited, coverage of WWDC. It must be the first time that a developer conference managed to get air time on mainstream news. Of course, the reason for this was that Apple made a slew of important product announcements this morning.

Firstly, the iPhone 3G has finally made the leap from rumour to reality. Despite all the specuation, there's just one model, with a 3.5", 480-by-320 display. Comms are covered by WiFi, Bluetooth and UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz). There's fallback to EDGE and GPRS as well. GPS is now part of the package as well.

iPhone availability starts on 11 July 2008 with only two Australian carriers officially on the list - Vodafone and Optus. No word yet from Three (although they have made announcements regarding other territories so, given the month before official availability we might expect something soon) or Telstra. I suspect that Telstra might not be hgh on Apple's list of potential carriers given their infamous "stick to your knitting" outburst.

MobileMe was also announced. This is an online extension to the Mac which delivers push email and calendar to the iPhone. The need to re-brand comes from the fact that it's now a Windows tool as well as a Mac one. It can sync with Microsoft Outlook as well as iCal and Address Book. Interestingly, there's no mention of Entourage support. Apple has provided some instructions to prepare for MobileMe.

 Apple • iPhone 3G • MobileMe

Reports from Mactalk and Macworld UK indicate that Apple has shipped a secret package to dealers in Australia and the US. Mactalk has a picture of one of these boxes with an embargo sticker. It's all pointing to an iPhone release although a couple of things make me feel uncertain.

1. There's no FCC approval for a 3G iPhone


2. Why aren't we seeing the iPhone with carriers?

In any case, I guess all will be revealed next week.

 3G iPhone • iPhone

Many sources (including Apple Insider are saying that Apple will be releasing another update, 10.5.4 next week at WWDC. After the recent half-gigabyte update, this might seem a little unfair (Matthew JC Powell recently discussed OS X updates at Australian Macworld.).

The only, sensible reason for another update is support of new features from Apple peripherals such as a new iPhone and MobileMe. Hopefully, it'll be a slimmer update than the last one and isn't another shed-load of bug fixes and minor enhancements.

It seems a foregone conclusion that Apple's .Mac service is to be given a facelift and a new name. So what would I like to see in Me.ComMobileMe?

1. Better Performance: Syncing to .Mac and uploading data is excruciatingly slow. Please Apple fix .Mac's abysmal performance.


2. Push Email: This looks to be a lay-down misere. Hopefully, it'll be a feature that extends to the WiFi enabled iPod touch.


3. Over the Air Calendar Sync: I'd love to be able to sync my calendar to my iPod touch without having to connect it to my computer.


4. Online Calendar Viewing: Hey Apple - talk to your buddies at Google and figure out how to make iCal data viewable without having to publish/subscribe. In other words - make it easy!

What would you like to see from Me.ComMobileMe?

 Me.Com • MobileMe

As if there weren't enough photo-sharing sites, Nikon's Picturetown is up an running for folks in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. This is in addition to a bunch of European countries.

Basically, if you've got a Nikon camera with WiFi you can point, click, upload and share, all from the camera without a PC.

Seems interesting enough but it's hard to see why Nikon would go into the web site business when services like Flickr, .Mac and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace already make image sharing so easy.

 Nikon • Photo-sharing • Picturetown

Over at Hydrapinion I ponder the question - Is a hacked iPod touch the best ever non-phone handheld ever made?

Stop by for a read.

 iPhone Jailbreak • iPod touch • Ziphone

From "The Age":

Zoo veterinarian Michael Lynch visited Dr Hildebrandt's team this year and brought "secret knowledge" back to Melbourne: how to internally massage an elephant's prostate with a fist to stimulate sperm production.

In other words - the good Doctor Lynch has become an expert in getting maximum output from his elephant. The result - the average elephant pumps out a 600 million sperm per millilitre of semen. Our Pachyderm Tugmaster gets that up to 200 million little swimmers per millilitre (makes us humans seem quite inadequate in comparison with just 20 million little fellas per ml.

A tear of pride has squeezed out of my eye.

Apple's .Mac service has been down for much of the day. Email access has been non-existent and the .Mac customer site has been unavailable intermittently. The Mac user group I'm a member of, iMug, has had several members reporting issues throughout the day. Syncing my iCal and Address Book data doesn't seem to have been affected.

100% of members were unable to access mail using an IMAP client. Normal service has been restored.
5.30.2008 :: 22:00 - 01:00 PST Due to scheduled maintenance from 10:00PM to 1:00AM PST, Some .Mac members could not access .Mac Mail. Normal service has been restored. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Access has been restored new but with all the hoopla about Apple renaming .Mac and registered about a bazillion new domains, many registered in Montenegro so that they get a .me TLD I wonder if some of today's hassles have been driven by preparations being made for a change-over.

With the iPhone to probably get push email and all the other iPhone speculation there hasn't been much attention on OS X and other parts of the Apple quiver. Well, the word is that .Mac will be getting a big revamp.

For starters, rumours are rife that .Mac will be renamed Me.Com. Apparently, that domain was owned by someone else but transferred last year. The full low-down is over at MacRumors. The links in the information chain started coming together when some developers found that the variable strings for .Mac in the latest OS X Leopard update had been changed to "%@".

In any case, my .Mac Me.Com wish-list would include push email, online calendar, and far faster access. I don't know what it's like in other countries but .Mac is excruciatingly slow at file syncing from the Antipodes.

Hopefully, it'll all be revealed at WWDC.

 .Mac • Apple • me.com • OS X

You might have noticed that I'm not posting as frequently as usual. That's because I'm in full-on study mode. I'm 10 days from an exam on the Content and Settings of the Gospels. My study is not focussed on several specific, thematic areas. These are

• Intertestamental history and its influence on what the Jews expected from Jesus
• The death and resurrection of Jesus
• The Kingdom of God - what is it?
• The titles of Jesus - what do they tell us about him?
• What are the Gospels? How do we interpret them? The Synoptic Problem.
• The significance of Miaracles
• The importance of Parables

Over the next ten days I'll have assembled a list of major topics within each theme and which specific verses from the Gospels I need to illustrate my views on each topic area.

At this stage I'm finding my key references are:

Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels

Jesus and the Gospels by Craig L. Blomberg

[Note: Both these links will take you to Amazon. If you purchase from those links I get a commission.]

 Bible • Jesus • Study

If you're a Mac user you'd have seen/heard that the third update to Leopard was released yesterday bringing the current Mac OS X version up to 10.5.3. Typically, the update seems to be about 420 MB for most Intel Mac users although I've seen a report that it can be a mere 180 MB. The Combo Updater at Apple's support site is 521 MB. My habit is to grab the combo updater as I can then use it on all the Macs at home without having to download it three times via Software Update. While the size of the update is causing many, particularly those with limited bandwidth, considerable angst, you also need a significant amount of free disk space in order to run the update.

So, as well as churning up to 521 MB of download allowance (that's a big deal in Australia where ISPs limit customer traffic) users with older machines need to make sure they have a decent chunk of spare space.

 Apple Software Update

From Techblog a few weeks ago:

The "Focus" has been designed by Manuael Prada as a concept camera. Is this the most significant potential change in SLR camera design of the last 30 years?

 dSLR • Focus • Prada

According to this story at iPhone Freak Safari has been licensed to Samsung for their SGH-L870 smartphone that' due out in Europe this August. When Apple ported Safari to Windows the reasoning was simple - give desktop users the same interface as their iPhone.

Porting Safari to Symbian S60 - I can't see why.

 Apple • iPhone • Safari

Those that follow me on Twitter or Facebook may have noticed some tweets or status updates earlier in the week where I was preparing to be interviewed for Channel 7 News in Melbourne.

That story went to air this evening.

It's true that the camera adds 10kgs.

 Channel 7 • VoIP

My desk, like many, tends to accumulate clutter. It starts with papers, mail, magazines and other bits of random detritus and, after a few weeks includes discarded chocolate wrappers and stuff that normally lives in a cupboard but doesn't get put away. Last weekend, I sold my Mac Mini and the 22" screen it was paired with and replaced it with a 20" iMac. I also had a 17" LCD that I used with my MacBook Pro but it was adding to the clutter and probably only used once or twice a week. So the monitor is boxed up and looking for a new home as well.

That leads me to the one new item that i have added to my tidied up workspace - the Griffin Elevator. I bought mine from a local retailer.

The Elevator comes in three pieces - two U-shaped aluminium pieces with soft rubber that protects the base of your laptop from scratches and stops the computer from slipping. The third piece is a thick polycarbonate with slots into which the U-shaped arms fit. All of this comes together to create a cantilevered stand that raises the laptop so that the screen is at a more ergonomically sound position.

Aside from the obvious ergonomic benefit I found one other thing - my MacBook Pro runs much cooler. If I sit on the couch with the computer, the base gets very warm within about 20 minutes or so. With the Elevator, the base stays cool and the temperature gauge on iStat Menu stays in the low 40s.

If you use a laptop as your main machine, you could do worse than consider a Griffin Elevator. It looks great and helps keep you healthy.

 Griffin Elevator • Laptop Ergonomics

Almost two weeks ago I posted on an application I'd stumbled past called JoikuSpot. If you're running a cell phone that uses the Symbian S60 operating system and has WiFi then JoikuSpot is a must have. It converts your humble 3G phone into a portable WiFi access point.

This evening, on the drive home from work I had my nephew in the car. We fired up JoikuSpot on my Nokia N95 and he spent some time surfing the Internet using his iPod touch.'

How cool is that?

The only danger is that mobile data costs can accumulate quickly, particularly as the iPod touch uses a fully featured web browser that supports most rich content (except for Flash).

 JoikuSpot • Nokia N95 • s60 • Symbian • WiFi

Well, the construction shields are down and the new Apple store in the heart of Sydney has the "Coming Soon" moniker attached to it. Apparently, that most trusted of sources from Apple, a construction worker on the building site, says that the store will be open in a week or so. I reckon that's rubbish.

I suspect that a more realistic expectation about three weeks. Here's why.

There's little doubt that Apple will Announce the iPhone 2.0 with 3G (possibly with HSPA + for superfast comms) at the opening of WWDC. That'll be 9 June 2008. Given history, product availability will be about a week or so after that. Let's add to that the fact that Apple has often run major product launches on Friday afternoons (ostensibly to avoid people staying away from work I guess).

For those reasons I'm pitching a claim that the Apple Store in Sydney will open on June 20 with iPhone 2.0 as the main entertainment!

 Apple Store • iPhone Release

Darren

For posting the following when asked how an iPhone would change his life:

iPhone? Can't wait! My WM6 powered JASJAM is all but dead and all it really does now is fuel my Microsoft aversion! Oh to have a proper, painless and accurate sync to my Mac, an "it just works" moment each time I connect. Besides, I need all the "cool factor" help I can get (or at least that's what my 11 year old daughter tells me!). So as soon as it's available, it's gonna be mine!

Darren - drop me an email at competitions at pocketmojo dot net (you know how to fix the "at" and "dot") with your shipping address and the awesome Sandisk Cruzer Contour will be winding its way to you ASAP.

I can relate to being told I'm not cool by a young daughter and looking for a "just works" piece of tech.

 Winner

This one's to be filed under "I'll believe it when I see it". Australia's most trustworthy technology journalist David Richards has extracted this from an un-named Telstra executive.

"We know what is coming we have seen the new device and it will be available on our network as soon as it is launched in the USA. By Xmas this phone will be capable of 42mbs which will make it faster than a lot of broadband offerings and the fastest iPhone on any network in the world "

I find it very hard to believe that Australia will have a different iPhone to any other territory. It's pretty obvious that the new iPhone will have 3G comms when it arrives (given recent announcements and rumours) but to suggest that it'll have a special radio that will give it superior performance here over other countries.

Telstra's NextG service is a 3G UMTS that runs at a frequency of 850MHz and can currently deliver 14.4 Mbps making it one of the fastest mobile Internet services in the world. There are suggestions that the service will run faster with specific modems but to expect Apple to include such a capability for just one carrier is stretching things.

I may be proven wrong but I suspect Mr Richards' source is talking through his butt.

 3G IPhone • Australian iPhone Fastest

According to a story at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) it looks like Apple's much maligned .Mac service is going to get an upgrade as part of the iPhone 2.0 release. It seems that Push Email, where email that arrives in your Inbox is automatically forwarded on to your handheld or smartphone, will become part of the service.

If this is true then it'll be the first time in ages that .Mac was given any serious attention. this might make that annual subscription worth paying for!

 iPhone 2.0 Push email

Not sure how many of you caught this story over at Engadget.

Fake Steve jobs casts light on the subject:

I just had Katie and Phil in here mumbling excuses and trying to blame the contractor who hired the actors for the iPhone queue outside the Fifth Avenue store in New York. I mean we've worked this out for months here in our Fifth Avenue mock-up set in Building X at the Cupertino headquarters. We've had rehearsal after rehearsal after rehearsal. How to give our rain gear, when to give our water, what kind of ratty-looking folding chairs to use. We've had these unemployed actors doing week-long run-throughs, and everything has been perfect.

ROFLMAO

 3G • iPhone • iPhone Queue

I've been messing about with the beta version of Nokia Maps 2 for a few weeks now and it's very good software. Local maps for much of the world are free, as is the software. What costs is a subscription to use navigation services.

The beta I've been running is quite fast and easy to use. If only the battery life of my N95 wasn't so poor. Without the car charger, GPS kills a battery in only a couple of hours. However, when I was recently in Sydney, and only a little lost, I could find where I was and where I wanted to go quickly. If I paid up the extra shekels for navigation I'd have arrived even closer to actual time I was expected for dinner!

 Nokia Maps 2.0 • Nokia N95

There's been lots of debate and discussion in the local (Melbourne, Australia) about the level of over-crowding on the local train system. I'm never going to complain again after watching the video below.

Courtesy of Girl Talk.

The folks over at The Register have tracked down this abomination from modmyifone.

Look away now, before your eyes are permanently damaged.

 iPhone mods • iPhone runs Vista

Over at current.com.au reporter Chris Nicholls managed to squeeze this little piece of information at CeBIT.

Optus has said the Australian iPhone launch will “most likely be in June” and estimated the price tag would likely be “around $700 or so”.

Sure, it doesn't say that much. The price is a little higher than I expected. I'd be surprised if the real price is over $500AUD. The supposed June date is no shock - WWDC is in a few weeks and that looms as the likely announcement platform.

 iPhone Australian Pricing

Don't forget that you can still enter to win a 8GB Sandisk Cruzer Contour - a very spiffy looking memory stick.

To win it all you need to do is post a comment to this post (use the Send Feedback link) telling me how you think the iPhone will/has changed you life.

Entries close on Friday night.

You have to be in it to win it!

 Win a 8GB Sandisk Cruzer Contour

I've been watching the fervour build on the 3G iPhone's official release date for a few weeks now. I've reported in a few places on the quasi-announcements made by Optus and Vodaphone and rumours by Telstra. Today, many sites are reporting that the official release date will be 9 June 2008 - the opening of WWDC.

A scan of Apple's PR site reveals - nothing. So, while June 9 seems reasonable, or even logical, it's not yet official.

So, keep your cool kids - it'll be here soon.

 3G iPhone release

OK - three reviews of mine have gone live recently - two screens, a router and a NAS. This time they're at APC.

Lenovo L171 LCD - While most of us have moved on to larger LCD screen for our computers, there's still a place for smaller displays. The Lenovo L171 Flat Panel Monitor could find a place in many environments such as point-of-sale systems and offices where space is at a premium.

Lenovo ThinkVision L220x LCD - The L220x delivers excellent image quality and performance despite its utilitarian profile.

Linksys WRT160N - We remember the days when routers looked like network gear - boring boxes with a few blinking lights and some ports for connecting devices. The Linksys WRT160N dispels those stereotypes with a space-age look that makes it look more like a model sports car than a router.

Synology Cube Station CS407 - Synology takes a different approach with the CS407. It looks more like a storage appliance that you set up and basically forget about.

 LCD • Lenovo • Linksys • Review • Routers

Over at Australian Macworld I've posted a review of the HTC Touch Cruise.

The Touch Cruise is a nice device. HTC's customisation aids its usability and it packs plenty of features. Mac users will need to factor in extra costs for a memory card and — as it's a Windows Mobile device — sync software.

Stop by and rack up some link live for me!

 HTC Touch Cruise

So you're planning to travel to the US, UK or Australia. If you carry a laptop it's darn annoying to have to extract the laptop form your bag and have it scanned separately at the security checkpoint. Well, it could be a lot worse.

According to this story from The Guardian you might suffer the following:

• Have you laptop's contents searched.
• The laptop being taken for a more thorough examination for several days

Personally, I find this to be an intolerable violation. If I'm travelling with my laptop (as I do regularly), having it confiscated for even a few hours can make a serious dent into the value of my trip. Losing t for a few days would likely render much of a trip useless.

On the upside, there are some things you can do.

• Sign up for an online data storage service and store important files there. Don't use the laptop as the only source of important data.
• Use you MP3 player as a data storage device to carry a spare copy of important files (you can't so this with an iPod touch but a shuffle will do the job. You could use a memory key but an MP3 player os more discrete.
• Put important files on a DVD and mail them to the place your staying ahead of time.
• Clear your web browser's cache and History. The sites you visit are no-one else's business
• Turn the computer off completely before going through the checkpoint (not just sleep mode). this will ensure that temporary data in the swap file is cleared.
• Create an encrypted drive partition on the hard drive and store important, confidential files there.

Do you have any other tips that might be handy?

 Laptop Security

Every now and then a piece of software really grabs me. JoikuSpot is one such application. This software turns mobile phones running Symbian S60, like my Nokia N95, into portable WiFi hotspots.

JoikuSpot is a free download, which gives a 90 day trial version. It can be either sent directly to your mobile via SMS from the download site or you can download it and then copy it to your phone manaully. I downloaded it and used Bluetooth to send it to the phone. Installation took only a few minutes and a few seconds later I had a WiFi hotspot running from my phone.

The main reason I was looking for an app like this was for my iPod touch. I connected the touch to the Internet through my N95's data connection over WiFi and it just worked. The downside is that there no real security as I couldn't set WEP, WPA or even a basic username/password for log in. The Read Me suggest you can but i couldn't find the appropriate option. However, there is a log so you can see how many clients are connected to your phone.

Only HTTP and HTTPS are supported. FTP and IMAP support will come soon. Given that JoikuSpot is still in beta I'm not surprised that the feature set is still incomplete.

Why use this rather than sharing a connection over Bluetooth? The answer is easy. Firstly WiFi is capable of faster data transfers than Bluetooth so you'll have a better web browsing experience. Secondly, and in my view more importantly, this is much easier than pairing a Bluetooth device and configuring a modem connection on your laptop.

Windows Mobile users aren't left out. There is also a JoikuSpot, called WMWifiRouter, downloadable from Joiku.com that does the same with Windows Mobile smartphones.

Thus far, JoikuSpot has passed my "just works" test.

 Internet Connection Sharing • JoikuSoft • N95 • WiFi HotSpot

Given that it's next to impossible to make an iPhone announcement that will surprise anyone (given the recent carrier announcements by Vodafone and Singtel/Optusand leaks from Telstra) the world is wondering what Apple will announce that will come as a surprise.

Many people seem to think that the mythical Apple Tablet (iTablet? MacBook Slide?) will make an appearance. Naturally, there are some leaked or Photoshopped images doing the rounds, adding further veracity to what is really a wild guess.

Personally, I doubt it'll come. The MacBook Air's lukewarm reception and the fact that tablet computers, in general, haven't really done much more than fill some specific vertical applications makes me think that Apple won't bother - yet. There's a couple of things they'll be to do.

A viable tablet will need to be thin, robust, have a user interface that doesn't feel like you need a mouse. Perhaps Apple can pull this off. I know that they have all the building blocks but I can't help think that the problem isn't one of the hardware being ready but the market.

 Apple • Apple Tablet • iTablet • MacBook Slide

Over at Hydrapinion I've continued my thoughts on the BlackBerry vs iPhone theme.

Stop by for a read.

 BlackBerry • iPhone

So RIM's finally released their 3G BlackBerry device - the Bold. I guess the follow up will be "Beautiful" and it'll be followed by "Young" and then "Restless". I've used lots of BlackBerry devices and was heavily involved in a corporate deployment - I know the platform pretty well both from a user's and a technical perspective. 3G on a BlackBerry is a non-event. The way RIM's software works, all email is compressed so that it arrives in 2kb chunks. If an email is larger than 2kb then only the first 2kb comes down. when you scroll through the message, the next bit comes through. Even browser traffic is routed through RIM's servers so that the data is proxied, compressed and served in a form that gets the best bang for buck out of slower comms.

On an iPhone, which delivers a much richer email experience, faster comms are more important. Messages are delivered in their entirety and there isn't the same level of data compression. The iPhone needs the fastest comms it can handle.

Many pundits are making out that a 3G BlackBerry is a big deal. To be frank the real mystery is why it's taken so long. Let's face it - it's not like RIM's only just coming into the smartphone market. If they didn't create the push email business they certainly made it accessible and popular. All of this smacks of making sure that they don't suffer the same fate as Palm with Windows Mobile.That is, going from dominant market player to also-ran.

 Apple • BlackBerry Bold • iPhone • RIM

As predicted, here's yet another iPhone "annoucement".

Optus, SingTel, Bharti Airtel and Globe to bring iPhone to the region

Sydney, 12 May 2008 – Optus, SingTel, Bharti Airtel and Globe today announced that they have signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Singapore, India, the Philippines and Australia later this year.

More information will be released at a later date.

I'd summarise it it but I doubt I could use fewer words. However, Optus says that sometime in the future we'll sell the iPhone.

Ha - I could do it in fewer words!

What does this announcement actually tell us? The iPhone won't be sold exclusively by one carrier.

 iPhone in Australia • iPhone rumours • Optus gets iPhone

I really like my iPod touch. I said as much in the recent Australian Macworld podcast. However, there is one serious deficiency - there's no support for voice recording devices. I use an XtremeMac MicroMemo [Affiliate Link] with my 80GB 5th generation iPod and it does a great job. However, no-one offers a recording solution for the touch.

Chatting to a colleague today, I had an epiphany - there's no microphone capability in the iPod touch because Apple doesn't want you to use the touch as a VoIP phone, therefore bypassing carriers wanting to sell the iPhone as an "all you can eat" cell phone. Think about it. The iPhone can make both normal and VoIP calls as it already has a microphone built in. An iPhone with a mike is the same as an iPhone without the phone bits.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that this was a deliberate strategy to ensure that the iPod touch wasn't used as a VoIP phone that would potentially strip revenue from the phone carriers they've done deals with.

 Apple conspiracy • iPhone • iPod touch • VoIP

This week, I participated in Australian Macworld's weekly podcast where I chatted with Editor Matthew JC Powell and Sean MacNamara about all the iPhone rumours. Sean also discusses some of the issues facing Mac users wanting or needing to run Windows.

You can listen to the podcast from here or subscribe through iTunes via this link.

 Australian Macworld • iPhone • Podcasts