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“Bill shock” is a term that is being bandied about around the IT and telecommunications traps, infact the ACCC are warning users of the IPHONE and 3G content phones to be mindful that data on third generation networks are charged differently to standard voice and text. Things that eat up data charges are email, web, video calls, voip, song, video and ringtone downloads, positioning and mapping software and other applications. So whilst you might have a great voice and text package which is affordable you may find data is not included, usually the data charges are charged differently.

But its not only the mobile phone that creates bill shock, these ring tone websites, advertisements and more that you see on the net often trick people to send a request for one ring tone and then the user finds out they have subscribed to something that eats away at their prepaid credit or adds massive charges onto their phone bill.

But its not only phones effected with “bill shock” some internet providers irth their packages start charging per megabyte after the initial monthly block of data is exhausted. Often users spending say 29.95 for 200mb find themselves with a massive bill at the end of the month cause just downloading the windows updates in a month chews up anywhere between 200 to 400mb per month.

But recently we have seen services launched on the net that chew up data, online radio and tv stations can use up data. Its good to know that responsible providers of this great content are showing disclaimers and warnings at the beginning of accessing this content to alert users of the possibilities that this content usage could be a costly exercise if they are not on the right internet plan.

I was listening to Tony Delroys program and he was talking to “the gadget guy” about mobile phones and I rang up and added my two cents worth. The discussion on mobile phones and mobile phone gps was interesting to say the least. Nokia charge for their NAVTEQ GPS system, which is a real pain you need to pay about 100+ dollars per year for the voice prompts and map updates, interesting to note that this is indeed about the average someone who used their tom tom or navman extensively would be paying to update it each year. Whilst quick to point out the nokia phones have this feature he brushed over the nokia navigator (actually I had to ring in and raise it) the navigator is designed for people that use GPS a lot its cheaper than the more expensive N70 and N95. It costs about 500+ to buy outright, the only issue is that Telsra in their infinite wisdom have not included this on their next g network. But more fool them as optus roll out the 3g network why wouldn't you look at this phone.

The maps are upgraded by the route66 mapping service, and yes occasionally they are out dated but most of the time is pretty cool for navigating your way around. I was not confident about traveling in sydney but when i got this phone I was happy to do it. The other thing to note is the speed alert on the phone it tells me when i go over the speed limit and that is a bonus

Keyboards are dirty objects at the best of times and the University of Washington as part of a research project, have found that high levels of fecal coliform, the bacteria found in fecal matter, was found on keyboards at the two busiest computer areas on campus.
This styudy comes amid a general growing awareness of the nasty things we pass around on shared surfaces such as gym benches, telephones and grocery-cart handles. This high lights the reasons for keeping public keyboards clean and the reason why disposable keyboard covers are now being used in hospitals.
My advice buy yourself drag dictate or naturally speaking and talk to pc lol

Well data storage explodes in august as Seagate rolls out a big drive, the 1.5 terabyte drive this August. Seagate is at pains to point out its the single largest hard drive capacity bump in the last 50 years. Ok now for those who say I will never fill it!!! I say bull dust, you'll fill it with more crap that you can poke and iso-linear circuit at. The new drive apparently will use four platters to cram the scale-tipping new raw capacity into a drive everyone will want in their home server. The price of this scary piece of technology has not been released yet but you can be assured they will start of sizable and come down The drive spins at 7,200RPM and the 3Gb/s SATA I interface has a sustained data rate of up to 120MB/s.

In further proove that Microsoft's Vista operating system is Bloatware compared to its nearest competitor the free Ubuntu Linux which is nice and compact in comparision when it comes to updates and running space. Microsoft has released a 56mb update to update the dictionary of all things and according to microsoft the words "Friendster," "Klum," "Nazr," "Obama," and "Racicot" are not recognized when you check the spelling in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008. So downloading the update of a whole 56mb will fix this well sort off. The English IT website theregister.co.uk put this to the test and discovered it still didn't identify the words correctly...

A new ultrafast optical switch on a chip could help speed up the internet in Australia by more than 6,000 per cent, say researchers from the University of Sydney. The researchers say that the new chips will increase switching to 64 times faster than anything that's happening in Telstra's networks. The optical switch apparently will eliminate of one of the bottlenecks in Australia's internet infrastructure.
Essentially the new switch replaces electrical switches that are used to convert optical signals to a spread of electrical signals that are then redirected to various destinations.
The optical switch consists of a specially-designed thumbnail-sized piece of glass wafer with wires etched into it. If you think of the internet as a big rail network and this switch as the points it means it can direct traffic onto diffierent rails in only pico seconds meaning that it can switch on and off at a rate of one million million times per second.

Well considering I'm not off contract on any of my telephone providers yet and optus only have ones side of Wauchope covered with either GSM and 3G coverage I cannot say I will running with a hop skip and a jump to my local Optus world for an Iphone. Shame that because if the coverage was the same as Telstra's I'd be giving the T the flick and going Optus. But fans wanting the new Iphone can atlast rejoice in the splendor that is Optus Ipone pricing for 3G pre-paid and contract plans just days after Telstra revealed its own iPhone retail pricing.
Post-paid Optus customers can obtain the 8GB iPhone for $0 upfront on a $79 'yes' iPhone 3G cap. Pre-paid users can buy the 8GB model for $729 and choose any of the current pre-paid call offers. I'm still asking myself do I need an Iphone, nah not really....

Last week on the Mike Welsh drive show on 2CC in Canberra we spoke about wireless headphones as an aside to what we were going to discuss. We looked at how the wireless headphone has evolved from an infra-red style base station unit now to a Bluetooth based unit on a PAN (Personal Area Network).

I was reminded by my friend Michael (a 2CC Listener) that the Bluetooth PAN based headphones now also have a number of other applications that could provide normally noisy venues, ventures, events or other activities to coexist in the cities of tomorrow as space for housing and entertainment becomes a premium.

“Silent clubbing” or “silent discos” are becoming a popular event in some cities, at the moment just a trendy thing to go to but they could become the club of the future. As the price of the headphones reduce they could be covered in the cover charge, either to buy or hire for the night. The Dj instead of pumping out into 2.4kw sounds systems could be pumping out 2.4watts of Bluetooth RF to his fans in the club as they bop around like sweaty penguins on acid.

You could go an see your favourite rap group Sweet FA as they make Sweet FA noise and don't annoy the neighbors. The silent disco or PAN music events have the abilities to provide a more personal event for people as they can tailor the noise or volume levels to themselves. The only issues are hiding noises from someone snogging in the dunnies won't be so easy as there is no loud music to drown that noise out.