petersaville.net

Deejay Sav I’ve just been reading an article in the Australian online
after hearing Alan Jones on 2GB talk to a former local newspaper owner Gerard
Thompson. Apparently at the urging of "several people" in the community he
has penned an open letter to Mr Oakeshott, Mr Thompson, who are these “faceless people”?
Is there any possib...ility that like you they are Nationals supporters or even
members?



Mr Thompson planned to at least a 1000 copies of his letter
printed and distribute it across the Port Macquarie and Wauchope business
community to "let people know the truth". How about letting us know who is funding it
your letter printing, The Nationals?



Your former news paper could have been mistaken for a
National Party news letter wrapped up with advertising and once the state and
federal seats went independent it lost its relevance. Could this be an exercise in cashing in on
Oakeshott’s 26 minutes of fame to make Mr Thompson relevant in the community
again?

FEDERAL police have launched an investigation into Google and some of its employees for collecting private information while taking photographs for the Street View service.

It was revealed last month the web giant's Street View cars had collected data from personal Wi-Fi networks while taking photographs in countries including Australia. Google last month admitted it had "mistakenly" collected fragments of data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks as its Street View cars drove past houses.

Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland today revealed he had referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police.

"I note there has been some complaints voiced, and understandably voiced, by the public in respect to practices that have been reported involving allegations that some information may have been obtained by staff of Google travelling around streets," Mr McClelland said.

"On Friday the Attorney-General's Department did refer those allegations and those reports to the Australian Federal Police."



My View Point

Ok, firstly, if you leave your network unsecured your asking for trouble as far as I am concerned its like leaving your front door open with your valuables in full view. Its been common practice for street tags (graffiti) to show up pointing out where someone has tracked an unsecured network. The issue is that google could have legitimately been looking for public hotspots and this data would have been useful for business people to know where they can get access to wifi. OK sure if you believe that, there is this nice coat hanger shaped bridge with fantastic views of Sydney harbor I can sell you!!

So what was google up to, basically it had wfifi sniffers out whilst it was looking and again this is legitimate if your marking public hotspots but once you move past the entry point of the network and then have access to the internal network thats when you have access to the data, remember data is intellectual property and money is derived from such so it pays to keep it secure!!!



IPAD working wonders already in hospitality

I recently had the pleasure of a trip to sydney learn about a new software product we are supporting at work. Its a point of sale system designed and developed by a company in Sydney who's founding programmer now lives in Long Flat NSW.

I raised an idea that perhaps developing the software to work on the ipod touch and the ipad would be a good idea so that waiters could use the ipods or the ipads for taking orders. We see something similar at the Scottish restaurant with the golden arches, there becomes a line up and the staff head out and take orders using a PDA worth over 1300 dollars running windows mobile and Newpos HOT. The IPOD retails in the 8gb format wifi only at about 300 dollars that means its 1000 dollars less. The ipad is around 600 dollars less.

A Sydney restaurant has decided to according to AFP An Australian restaurant has ditched printed menus and now hands diners the latest tech-craze, Apple's touchscreen iPad computer, from which to choose and order their meals.

Risking damaging wine spills and customers taking an iPad 'to go', the Global Mundo Tapas eatery at the Rydges Hotel in North Sydney introduced its new menus three days ago -- within a week of the iPad's Australian release.



And as I thought someone has set up the menus and pos software for the ipad with an application developed ahead of the tactile device's launch allows diners at the 50-seat restaurant to browse the menu -- complete with photographs and tasting notes -- with a flick of a finger.

Order a steak and the application asks how you would like the meat cooked, and placing your order can be done with the press of a button. Planned features include pop-up boxes that will suggest wines to match meals, and stock-control mechanisms to delete sold-out items from the menu.



But this is technology that future tech enthusiastic fast foodies were going to see in a couple of years build into their tables



BILL SHOCK – New tech New BILLs to scare and financially destroy you

A warning is out for people to be careful about data packs on mobile phones and the new IPADS make sure you get data packs that don't continue to bill you were mb after you go over your cap, whilst prepaid tends to be an expensive option in someways as its often higher priced that post paid usages but I've already seen people get massive bills from data packs.

Nah seriously, we have to man items made of plastic these days and imagine a laptop made of fire retardant bamboo. Yes, whilst some of the first light bulbs had bamboo filaments the circuits on this baby are not bamboo.

The case is clad with a nice plantation grown bamboo, apparently making the laptop environmentally friendly cause it reduces the amount of plastics used on the case and means that the case is biodegradable. Lol

Well open source software is expanding and today I today I thought I would point out a good package for the kids called TUX paint, names after the linux penguin this multiplatform kids graphics package is TUX paint, with various addons this powerful but easy to use paint package allows kids to show off their creative talents. Its also one of the packages I have sene in use at primary schools on the computers.

Microsoft has taken a new tack in the war against piracy by banning users who try to connect to the Xbox Live server using a modified Xbox 360. Shame that, the old xbox generation 1 they did the sae so someone set up their own network of gae servers. Will it happen again?
At present gamers the world over who have tampered with their machine are logging on to find a message telling them they've been banned from the server. Te reason for this is that they are deemed by Microsoft to have breached the terms and conditions of use or EUA – end user agreement.

I mean what do you do when you go to the bank and find your money is not there, apparently due to a glitch many of the National Australia Bank (NAB) customers were singing for their supper because it left them waiting for their pay packets after a software error caused electronic transactions to be delayed.
NAB spokeswoman Luisa Ford said the IT problem had been rectified by staff in Melbourne working since last night and some payments had already been processed successfully.
Retail and business customers were both affected by the glitch, i could imagine the sinking feeling that many people had not seeing income in their accounts. It would have had me freak out i can tell you.

“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