Today I attended the morning sessions of the Voice Leadership Forum here in Wellington. You see, I am one that believes most help desk/customer services provide an awful experience. I would put the IRD and American Express in the "ok, these are not bad" basket.

Anyway, the main reason I decided to accept the invite was to see what companies are doing to overcome this problem. And the forum was a good place to see the other side.

I found out about the IRD experience with speech recognition, voice print identification and queue management. This was a big surprise. I knew about their experience with speech recognition, but voice print identification? Wow, that's cool, and it seems to work. The IRD wants (and here is a big ask) to have 800,000 customers (that's us, New Zealand citizens and residents) enrolled in the program. Forget about "what's date of birth, your mother's maiden name, address, last known dog's name" security questions.

I also heard from BNZ, the Newcastle Permanent Building Society, and TelstraClear.

TelstraClear was one of the main sponsors, with Salmat. And interestingly enough, while most of its customers I have talked to dread calling their call centre, the company is still one of the big providers of knowledge in this area - it seems almost every company in the forum had interacted with TelstraClear being a provider in this area. The presentation (just before lunch and therefore short of some details), gave the audience an idea of a framework to identify problems in call centres, as well as the stages where each company can be positioned when it comes to the deployment of solutions, technical or otherwise.

I wonder though (and I didn't want to ask this in the forum), in which stage TelstraClear see themselves?

After a couple of years where Vodafone New Zealand was the only official mobile operator carrying the Apple iPhone handset around here, Telecom New Zealand is now preparing to start selling the smartphone as well.

This comes after a week of speculation - from new configuration settings present on iOS 5, to a web page with a link to an iPhone page that soon disappeared earlier this week. The confirmation came soon after, and today I received this:

Who's going to be Telecom's first?

From 12:01 AM on Friday, November 11, our customers will be able to purchase the iPhone 4S from our Telecom concept stores in central Auckland (167 Victoria St West) and central Wellington (42 Willis St). 

We'll also be open at that time in Christchurch (Moorhouse Ave) and Dunedin (101 George Street).  The iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS will be available from all our other stores from 9:00 AM that day.

If you're one of the dedicated who plan to buy at 12:01, we've got a few things planned to make your wait as cosy as possible.  Each store will have entertainment, food and drinks - free for those who register on the day, at the store to buy an iPhone.

In central Auckland (167 Victoria St West) we're holding a pre-launch event for customers who are purchasing an iPhone with live entertainment by People of Paris and Josh Leys, food and drink, and special guest Dan Carter who will help entertain customers in the lead up to midnight. Dan will hand over the very first iPhone purchased from Telecom to the lucky customer!

Excited? Registrations begin from 6pm and entertainment starts at 7pm. Head to the Telecom Building, Central Auckland (167 Victoria St West), L2 Conference Centre.

For more information on pricing and plans for iPhone on Telecom XT visit www.telecom.co.nz/iPhone

It looks like they want to make a splash. And the prices are not too bad:

Are you getting one? From Telecom New Zealand, Vodafone New Zealand, parallel imported or directly from Apple?

Here is an example of how messed up things are with browsers. We all complain about Flash, from sometimes being resource angry, to having lots of vulnerabilities.

A lot of people also keep saying how great Google Chrome is. And Google Chrome comes with its own built-in Flash platform, something we can't update independently if a new Flash version is released.

Today when I went to the Xero login page it says "You do not have a current version of Flash installed. We highly recommend that you update to the latest version of Flash before using Xero." And since I am using latest and greatest Google Chrome, I have no way to update it.

This is another example of the mess created by having browsers incorporating third party platforms directly. Developers that want to make sure users have the benefits of the latest developments keep checking browser version ("hey you, stop using Internet Explorer 6") and platform versions ("hey you stop using this old Flash version" or "hey you, stop using the Java Runtime and upgrade it or risk being delivered something that will mess your computer).

The fastest browsers move to HTML5 and leave this behind the better. Also, Xero will need to update their code to make sure you are using the latest Chrome, not the latest Flash.

I'm will be in Singapore 17 - 21 October to attend a HP event on Converged Infrastructure in APAC. Will post updated information in my "unofficial" discoveringhp.com blog while there.

As usual, full disclosure: travel and accommodation expenses being paid by HP.

I registered to the Amazon AWS 101 Cloud Computing Business Seminar event happening in Wellington and Auckland. I am a tech guy, and I use technology. A lot. That's how we keep Geekzone running - we use the lot, including databases, performance optimisation, content delivery networks, balanced DNS, analytics, etc. Because that's how we keep the site running, and that's how we have it on the top.

So naturally I thought learning about Amazon AWS would be awesome and I could at some point use this.

But when I registered I put my title as "blogger" instead of "director". Because that's what I do for a living. The "director" at my company is just the signing title.

Then I got a strange phone call from Amazon asking what is my title, followed by this email:

Thank you very much for your interest in our Business Seminar in Wellington on Oct 13. This event is a customer-focus event and therefore not appropriate for Media and Bloggers. However, we would be very happy to answer any of your question and therefore set up a meeting with our PR Manager. Please let me know if you'd like to that.

So, there you go.

After I replied to this note with a clarification they sent me an email saying I am welcome to the event.

I think not.

Is TelstraClear having some routing problems? Why is it routing traffic from New Zealand to the United States via Hong Kong?

Isn't enough that we are far away from content, why use the longest route to get something then?

Discussion going on Geekzone at the moment.

Update: Yes, someone mentioned it's the Internet, if things are not well, alternative routes and all. Yes, I know that. Still, if we are so far away from content that 200ms influences the results, it would be good if a high quality network could make sure things were taking the optimal path and only use the fallback as an alternative for when things go wrong, not as the default for days/weeks. In this case, someone somewhere should be alerted.

I have a Cradlepoint PHS300 and noticed something interesting when using mobile data: if I plug my 3G Sierra  Wireless USB modem to the PHS300 and connect my laptop to the router via WiFi I get faster speedtest results than if I plug the 3G USB modem directly to my laptop.

This is obviously for the same network, same location (Auckland CBD), around the same time (as in plug to laptop, test, plug to PHS300, text, plug back to laptop, test)...
Also the connection seems to be more reliable.

Interesting. I know both the laptop USB adapter and the 3G USB modem are USB 2.0, but why the speed difference?

And no, it's not a paid advertising for Cradlepoint products, but I would be interested to know if anyone have similar experiences with other 3G/WiFi routers.

I just read that Telstra is adding a 500GB broadband plan in Australia for AU$119.95. Users on HFC (cable modem service) can get 100 Mbps speeds for an extra AU$10.00

Telstra's presence in New Zealand, TelstraClear, offers a 25 Mbps HFC plan for around NZ$200 a month with a 120GB allowance, which is about five times more expensive, with 1/4 of the speed. Yes, that bad.

Earlier this year TelstraClear ran a HFC 100 Mbps trial, which I was invited to participate. HFC is a brilliant service (on any speed), as anyone who ever used the cable modem service can confirm, when compared to DSL alternatives. But the company have since gone quiet, and apparently have no plans of announcing new services supporting neither those speeds or allowances.

People keep asking on Geekzone  when the 100 Mbps plan is coming and the company keeps saying we should wait, something is coming up. But it's been quite some time now and the company is not known for moving fast. I understand their HFC infrastructure is currently ready for DOCSIS3 and 100 Mbps speeds, but somewhere someone is not signing the "Go Ahead" memo.

Disclaimer: as a participant of the 100 Mbps trial I was offered, at the end of the test period, to return to my original plan or move to the top plan while keeping the 100Mbps profile. It was an easy decision, since I was already paying for the top plan, so in our household we do have a 100Mbps HFC connection.

Today I got an invite to a press briefing here in Wellington later this week, with James Reinders (Director, Chief Software Evangelist, Intel) and  Nicolas Erdody (Director, Open Parallel Ltd). The invite also mentioned the upcoming Multicore World conference, happening here in Wellington in March 2012:

The World is Going Parallel and New Zealand Software Company has a Leading Role in it

Since the advent of computers, and later of the internet, the processing of massive amounts of data has been growing. Industry has been increasing computing power for decades, but the trend towards increasing speed of processing has reached the physical barrier. Vendors cannot put more processing power into a chip, without overheating it. To solve the problem, vendors changed the architecture, building more processors into a single chip, calling them multicore chips. These new chips entered the mainstream market a few years ago, with all vendors currently selling them.

New multicore chips are also more power efficient, and the potential is basically unlimited for the number of cores that you can put on them. The potential processing power is absolutely unheard of, which will not only allow users to do thing faster, but also add more, and new, conditions to the current problems. Now it is possible to imagine applications that have not been possible before.

However, this new and exciting scenario comes with a challenge. Since the inception of computers, software has been written with a single central processing unit (CPU) in a chip. To exploit the potential of multicore chips, software needs to be written thinking in parallel. Parallel programming is not a new concept, but it is more difficult to write. It is estimated than less than 10% of all the software programmers worldwide are able to deal with parallel programming. In the next 10-15 years, there will be huge opportunities to either deal with all the legacy code written from decades of sequential programming, or to create new software that will take full advantage of thousands of cores in a chip, plus all the range of services, solutions and systems integration in between.

This is an ideal ground for the fertile mind of the technologists, software communities and researchers within NZ. It's mainstream but it's a niche new technology. It's already taken advantage of the skills available in NZ, and parallel computing will be essential to process the vast quantities of data produced by the SKA telescope, a global project that NZ is key part of it. James Reinders (Director, Chief Software Evangelist, Intel) and Nicolas Erdody (Director, Open Parallel Ltd) will be discussing the opportunities and challenges that Multicore presents in a press conference this Wednesday 21 September 2011.

Open Parallel, a NZ based company specialised in Software for Multicore and Parallel Computing has been working with Intel since early 2010. To increase awareness about multicore and to present the ecosystem that NZ already has in place to unveil the potential of multicore chips, Open Parallel organises Multicore World 2012 - a global conference about Multicore Technology (software and hardware) as part of its vision to establish New Zealand as a centre of excellence for multicore and parallel computing. Multicore World will be held 27 - 28 March 2012 at the Wellington Town Hall. The main goal of the conference is to provide IT decision makers being C-level executives as well as software community leaders with the knowledge and the connections they need to make valid business and technology decisions in terms of their multicore software and hardware requirements over the coming years.

James Reinders and Nicolas Erdody will be presenting about Multicore, Parallelism, the SKA project and Multicore World in a press conference in Wellington