Freeware and Shareware – Know the Difference

Over the years, I’ve seen people incorrectly use all sorts of terminology when it comes to computing. Sometimes you feel like you are obligated to point out the mistake but in other cases you might wonder whether or not you are up to the challenge. One such example is a misunderstanding of the concepts of …

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Silent or Verbose Updates – What Do You Prefer?

Another quick one tonight so I can correct the old body clock. Software these days usually includes some sort of automatic update functionality. The vast majority have some an update process that makes itself known to the user upon launch (either to check for updates or to install updates). Otherwise, software may update itself silently …

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Keep Track of Friends and Loved Ones with Foursquare

A quick one before I head back to the airport to fly back to Sydney. With the rise of location services in recent years people have been able to find places close by when the time suited. In an earlier post, I wrote about WorldSurfer which allows you to use sources such as Google or …

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3D Newspaper – Genius or Gimmick

A couple of days ago the miss us and I arrived in Bangkok and I was surprised yesterday to see that the Bangkok Post had printed most of its photos and a good deal of its advertisements in 3D. Given that it was a printed newspaper, it had to use the traditional blue and red …

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No Inflight Calls For You!

Shortly after ACMA had given the green light for cellular communication technology to deployed in aircrafts, QANTAS and Jetstar have quickly put the brakes on any such deployment in their fleet. In a blog entry earlier this week I touched on how this technology could become a nuisance particular on longer international flights. At the …

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Use Your Mobile as a Modem and Save Money

Some of us are regular users of mobile broadband services and normally rely on a mobile broadband modem of some description to get an internet connection whilst we are on the move or away from home. Dialup access once reigned supreme for mobility and availability but mobile broadband has pretty much put it to rest. …

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Where’s the Speech Recognition?

About fifteen years ago, my dad purchased the first PC to grace the family home. It was pretty good for its time as it sported a Pentium 120MHz CPU, 16MB RAM and a massive 1GB hard drive. It also came with a pretty hefty price tag. Shortly after we purchased the computer, we saw a …

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Graphics Cards Need Rethinking

In recent years, the graphics card industry has been pretty much a two horse race. nVidia has been around for a while after having taken out and absorbed 3dfx and has been sparring with ATi for most of the last decade. What has become apparent to me, at least on a basic level, is that …

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Check Naming Conventions for Consistency

Just a quick blog before I hop on a flight back to Helsinki. One thing I noticed in Denmark was how they labelled floors in buildings, particularly when it came to labels in elevators and around escalators. Unlike what www expect in Australia, the ground floor is marked as “zero” with floor above it incrementing …

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Australian Airlines to Offer Inflight Cellular Services

In a previous post I wrote about how about how our friends across the ditch were getting access to inflight SMS as well as data for smartphones. That was a couple of months ago and it seems like us Australians weren’t about to be outdone by the Kiwis according to this SMH article. As expected …

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