You gotta love the Geekzone community. Users reported in our forums about the Sky TV outage across New Zealand, with some updated reports:

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=48&TopicId=7237

Very good folks, great job finding these things...

Update: a Geekzone Blog is also coming, courtesy of cokemaster: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/cokemaster/244

Update II: a more complete report is now available: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=6102

Just so that you know, David Geller posted this on whatcounts.com (Blackberry - I wish I could love you):

"For example, we were sold on a business plan and told we could use the Blackberry service to read from our corporate email accounts and forward email to our devices - with a slight delay. I'm told it's about 15 minutes, but can be ratcheted down if they detected increased traffic levels. I was also told that if I deleted items on the Blackberry, they'd be deleted on my inbox. Makes sense. I was told the same was true the other way around. That makes even more sense and seems even more critical. After all, you don't want to come back from lunch, sit down at your workstation and delete 50 messages only to find that they're still sitting on your Blackberry later that day."

"Well, guess what? That's not the way it works unless you shell out $5K for their Enterprise version. Yikes. Suddenly the whole experience gets very complicated and very expensive. They already support connecting to your IMAP or POP mailbox. Can't they reconcile deletions bidirectionally? They can. They choose not to."

Of course you have to read the whole post to get the context, but in summary, you only get the benefits if you go for the Enterprise version.

I think more people should read about Windows Mobile and the MSFP.

The Techtalkblogs is an interesting collective website, aggregating feeds from Australian and Kiwi bloggers:


TechTalkBlog features up to date and interesting news items from around the Australian and New Zealand technology and blogging community. Yes, it does include New Zealand bloggers (this blog is listed there too), and they should update their FAQ page to state this.

The site offers a way to improve relevance by allowing readers to give an interesting post a big thumbs up by clicking on the Thumbs Up Icon. When you give a Thumbs Up, you are helping the community by helping TechTalkBlogs work out what are the most interesting stories floating around the local blogosphere.

The feed is updated every 2 hours and is always changing. Microsoft is supporting the initiative.

There is a new website coming soon (I am told it should be up and running at full force this 29 March): bitsdujour.com.

Bitsdujour.com will offer a "one deal a day" software title, offering one product a day, in a limited quantity, at a big discount - and available for download only.

Ellen, one of the persons involved in this new site, tells me it will have Windows software, with the PDA software throw in now and then (she is one of the marketing people at iliumsoft.com).

I am curious to find out the software titles available - I got a hint for the first one, but not the exact title. The only problem is that to get some of the bargains we based in New Zealand will have to be up at night because of the timezone. If it's like some other "one deal a day" sites the stock generally goes very fast early in the day!

This is a smart move... Telecom New Zealand has announced a new plan called Telecom Freedom, in which calls between a Telecom Mobile and a nominated Telecom landline are free. This is appealing to families: parents will feel safe their kids can call home at any time, even without credit on a prepaid number, and other nice features.

It didn't take long for some people to discover how to hack the system: by installing a VoIP gateway at home (Asterisk PBX nonetheless) and two landlines (with the VoIP system bridging them) it will be possible to call local numbers (from your home base of course) for free from a mobile phone: simply call your home number with the Telecom Freedom option, get a dial tone offered by the VoIP system and dial the number you want to reach.

For the price of some hardware, two landlines and a mobile phone you get this feature. If you are on the streets most of the time and call local numbers a lot, this is an interesting money saving strategy - not that we endorse it.

How long before Telecom New Zealand finds out how to block it?

This is great news, for British users: "open mobile Internet service option for £7.50 a month and now with unlimited browsing and e-mail".

That's right. T-Mobile UK is now providing unlimited browsing and e-mail for just £7.50 a month, on a contract. 

The web ‘n’ walk service offers access to the Internet instead of “walled garden” WAP services (such as Vodafone live!).

I doubt we will see this kind of plan in New Zealand or Australia any time soon...

It is not only Microsoft that delays their latest OS. It looks like Ubuntu Linux is having to delay its latest release:

"The next version of Ubuntu Linux, "Dapper Drake" has been pushed back six weeks to June 1 to permit better quality, Linux Standard Base certification and improved international language support."

It looks like it's not ready for prime time, that's what it looks like... Even hardcore Linux users like Taniwha have problems installing this beta.

Today I visited 10, the wannabe on-line tech tv show, with two cute-looking hostesses that seem to be always screaming to the camera and microphone. And run by Microsoft.

The idea is that every weekday at 10:00 am (PST) the site is updated with a new video that highlights people, their passions and often the technology they are using. At the end of each week these videos are compiled into a full length show with some extras.

There are also some blogs, such as Education and Health. Hmmm, very interesting (not).

The shows are conducted by Laura and Tina, the two hostesses I mentioned before. They seem to be always reporting things in a "cool", "fun" way - annoying most of the times, and did I say they are always screaming?

Think podcasts turn videocasts, with a funky design and silly "Hello from China" comments in the threads associated with each video.

At least it's a good example of open application (on Windows OS): it works with Internet Explorer (with Windows Media player streaming) and Firefox (with Apple Quicktime player streaming). It won't work on Apple OS X though, either on Safari or Internet Explorer. And the Profile page is not working, returning a funny message that I would translate into either a 404 or 500 error (this is real tech talk).

Topics go like this:

• "Jon Bach, of Puget Custom Computers, impresses Tina with a monster gaming machine kept cool by a custom designed liquid cooling system."
• "Danny James and Dillin Quent of Theory in Motion stop by the studio to drop the beat.  Very nice.  Recognize the song from somewhere?"
• "Technology News as presented by Laura and Tina, news desk, blazers, smart-looking glasses and all.  Ok, well maybe not the blazers or the news desk...or even the smart-looking glasses.  But the news, yes, we've got news."

Ok, great Digg material, and wonderful stuff for Scoble to hype. Boring. Next?

A very interesting article on Fortune will make office workers, Dilbert readers, and Office Space fans shiver when thinking of the time spent in cubicles at work.

The article tells us the cubicle was the brainchild of Bob Propst, who had joined a furniture and office company called Herman Miller, based in Zeeland, Mich (not to be confused with good old New Zealand folks!). 

Originally dubbed Action Office, Propst's system was designed to increase productivity. Productivity would rise if people could see more of their work spread out in front of them, not just stacked in an in-box. The new system included plenty of work surfaces and display shelves; partitions were a part of it, intended to provide privacy and places to pin up works in process. The Action Office even included varying desk levels to enable employees to work part of the time standing up, thereby encouraging blood flow and staving off exhaustion.

"The Action Office wasn't conceived to cram a lot of people into little space," says Joe Schwartz, Herman Miller's former marketing chief, who helped launch the system in 1968. "It was driven that way by economics."

Check the full article on Fortune, and read about the move from cubicle to work mobility. And a good slideshow of office cubicles across the years.

PS. Did I say I have an autographed book from Scott Adams? Years ago I bought an electronic copy of one of his books and it didn't work on the Palm device I had back then. I sent him an e-mail saying what was wrong, and a few days later I got a hardcopy of this book, with a Dogbert cartoon and an autograph. Cool!

Image: © Photographer: Dennis Cox | Agency: Dreamstime.com 

There's a very good (and long, full of screenshots) article on jkontherun.com about Alternative text input methods for the UMPC.

Interesting enough you will see that most solutions are already out there, simply because the UMPC is actually running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. So whatever you read on that article should apply to Tablet PCs as well.

But you will also find out some text input alternatives that are not quite well known, and some that are also present in the Windows Mobile Pocket PC world.

I personally use RitePen (pictured and in the article) on my Tablet PC and it's great - you can write anywhere on the screen and it's very good recognition.