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Relaxing in Naxos

2010-05-20T08:00:00.005-12:00

We arrived in Naxos after a 5 hr boat ride and strolled around the bays to the Flisvos resort which has nice accommodation just a few minutes from the beach and windsurfing hire center. We met Tommy and Sarah (from Wellington) who are working at Flisvos for the summer. I got a short sail in the afternoon in a light breeze. The center is really well kitted out with a huge range of RRD and Neil Pryde gear. We had a meal at the beach cafe and numerous cocktails with the kiwi crew.

On Wednesday we biked over the hill to Plaka beach and had a good look around the shops at Naxos. It's nice to come here before the peak season without the massive crowds this place is geared up for. On Thursday we hired a buggy and drove over the hill and down to Flisvos's Kitesurfing center. They're having unusually weird weather at the moment so there wasn't a huge amount of wind so we spent a few hours soaking up the rays at the beach before heading back to Naxos. By this time the wind had kicked in and I got out sailing on some big sails (7.7 and 8.2) for a few hours.

Arrived in Greece

2010-05-18T22:09:00.000-12:00

Luckily we had Kerianne (one of Sheryl's friends) meet us at the airport and take us to her place in Glynfada. We spent most of Monday chilling out as we were quite tired from all our traveling. We decided to catch the early ferry on Tuesday to Naxos. We plan to return to Athens for 2 days later next week before we go to Egypt.

Rome in a day

2010-05-16T22:08:00.001-12:00

We had 24 hours to see Rome - so as soon as we had caught the train to the Terminus we headed to our accommodation just 3 blocks away. Our vibrant and entrepreneurial host Mabri (he runs a laundromat, internet cafe and rents out the local's spare rooms!) gave us some tips so we could cram in all the mains sights. We got a crammed bus and headed towards the Vatican.

The buildings are amazing in Rome with such a long history behind everything. The city was packed with tourists so it was all pretty full on most of the time. Before our fight on Sunday we walked passed the forum towards the colosseum. We caught our plane to Athens on Sunday afternoon.

Croatian Islands

2010-05-14T22:07:00.002-12:00

On Saturday we had a early start after staying the night in Central London so we could easily Tube it to Heathrow for our flight to Split in Croatia. We arrived in Split to a welcoming warmth in the air, our boat had already left at 1pm so we had to play a bit of catch up. We ended up chilling out at a restaurant for most of the afternoon eating pizza and drinking some local beer. Finally we caught a 830pm ferry to Stari Grad. The complete lack of taxis on arrival took us by surprise but we managed to squeeze into the old mini van to make it over to Hvar where our boat was moored. What a day!

On Sunday morning we met most of the other people on our boat which would be our home for the next 6 days. The local Croatians sailing and cooking for us were great with Igor quite an entertaining host! We were surrounded by Kiwis, Aussies and a few Brits and Canadians. Luckily our boat was mostly couples, the other boat that sailed with us had a pile of obnoxious Aussies and Kiwis who were intent on being drunk constantly. We met a neat couple from Wellington that a based in London that we'll catch up with when they get back in November. We quickly got used to the morning cruising, a swim before lunch on a few occasions (it was frickin cold), followed by huge cooked lunch. We got to visit some interesting towns, Dubrovnik being the highlight with its interesting history with the recent war in the mid 90's. We also squeezed in a day trip to Mostar in Bosnia Hertzgovna which is a town that got badly damaged during the same war. The week was really relaxing and great to see lots of different seaside towns in Croatia.

We left the following Saturday in torrential rain heading for Rome.

Chaotic London

2010-05-07T22:07:00.001-12:00

We spent the last 4 days in London and stayed with Danny, Janine, Isla and Lulu in Hitchin, about a 30 minute train ride from central London. After quite a bit of flying we did a day trip up to Cambridge which was really relaxing and fun to punt down the river past all the schools of Cambridge University. We picked up some bargain on some warm clothing which was a must as it was only about 12 degrees - usually cold for this time of year. The next day we did the big bus tour in central London and went for a ride on the London eye and took a ride down the river Thames. We walked down Regent Street and had a good look at all the elaborate shops. We caught up with Anthony (Sheryl's old boss) for a curry and had a few beers with a couple of Sheryl's friends and Nick, Heather and Max. The transport system in London is really good but there is just so many people everywhere, so I can't see myself ever wanting to live there. A good place to visit though!

Bring on Beijing

2010-04-29T22:05:00.003-12:00

We arrived in Beijing this morning after a 13hr flight from Auckland. Beijing is a busy modern city, unfortunately we didn't know the weekend was a national holiday so the population swelled well beyond the usual 16M.

We had a tour guide for most of our 4 days and crammed in all the main tourist attractions including the great wall, the Ming tombs, the forbidden city, the temple of heaven, the pandas at the zoo and the summer palace. We had a lunch with a local family in the Hutong district, got to see the Olympic site and went to cloisonne, jade, tea and silk factories. We even managed to squeeze in an acrobatic show and a peking duck dinner.

Waikiki beats the winter in Wellington

2009-07-24T20:12:00.006-12:00

On Monday we got up early to get out to Kahului Airport for our flight to Hilo. We had such a great time in Maui but it seemed to go so quickly.

We picked up a rental car in Hilo and took the scenic drive around the coast to Kona. The resort we stayed at was located in a nice bay with heaps of restaurants and souvenir shops. This was a good chance for us to sit back and relax for a day or so, soak up a bit of sun and even squeeze in a bit of shopping at the new mall in Kona.

On Wednesday we drove down the coast and up the mountain towards the volcano. Unfortunately the weather changed pretty quickly and before long we were driving in torrential rain. It didn't let up and a lot of the roads were closed due to dangerous levels of sulphur and recent lava flows so we bailed and drove onwards back to Hilo.

Yesterday afternoon we arrived back in Honolulu. Our flight was interesting as the plane was mostly full with US marines coming to Oahu before they head off to Afghanistan.

Waikiki is a pretty mad place, there are people everywhere! Who said we're in a recession? The hotel we're staying at is just across the road from the beach and the view from our room is pretty awesome. It's really warm here - 30 degrees today so we hit the shops this morning and then went down to the beach later this afternoon. We'll try and get down to the beach earlier tomorrow before it gets too hot. Having a great time!

It's a hard life

2009-07-18T19:44:00.007-12:00

Over the last few days we've explored all over the island of Maui.

On Wednesday we drove around the west side of the island and had a good look around the shops at Lahaina. The road around the NW part of the island was pretty narrow and a far contrast to the 4 lane highway that goes from Kahului to Kihei - well worth it though as the scenery was spectacular.

We tried to drive down the road to Hana yesterday but had to turn back as the road was closed due to roadworks - this was the perfect excuse to grab some lunch from the locals cooking some delicious teriyaki bbq chicken.

I've windsurfed the last 4 out of 5 days and decided to chill out today and watch some of the action at the Maui Race series. Yesterday I swapped the slalom gear I had rented for a freeride board and a few wave sails - this was heaps of fun in the 25-35 knots at Kanaha yesterday. I'm hoping to get a final sail in tomorrow afternoon before we head to the big island on Monday morning.

The place we're staying at is really cool - a nice swim in the morning and a bit of sunbathe to get things started has become a favourite of ours.

This afternoon we drove up to the Haleakala crater - it was really cold up the top but good to learn about how the island of Maui came to be how it is today.

We've uploaded plenty of photos for you to see more of our travels.

Fun times in Maui

2009-07-15T19:24:00.007-12:00

Sheryl and I arrived in Maui yesterday afternoon. First stop was to pickup our rental van then we headed down to Neil Pryde Maui to get sorted with some windsurf gear for the week. What a cool shop, the crew there were really friendly and helpful too. Thanks guys!

Armed with some great gear, Neil Pryde MKII slaloms (the same as I use back home) and a JP Slalom board, we then headed down to the beach where the whole atmosphere was buzzing. Kanaha Beach Park is really cool, heaps of space for everyone to park their vans and wagons and plenty of lush grass for rigging.

I headed out on the 5.4 and was soon getting dialed in. The JP is a bit more full on than I am used to and my 2 months of hibernation prior to coming to Maui meant I was a bit rusty. Soon I was getting back in the groove and getting some good downwind runs and fairly decent gybes.

Shez got some nice photos and braved the wind for an hour!

We then headed down to Kihei where we checked into to our accommodation then went out for a nice relaxing dinner - we had some local fish which was delicious.

So that was our first day in paradise!

Here's a few more photos

A better way to build web apps

2009-04-12T09:28:00.004-12:00

I haven't done a tech post for a while so here goes...

Google launched their App Engine project about a year or so ago and have just launched support for Java. I've always been a fan of Java & mySQL as it has always been up to the task with any problem I wanted to solve. Here are my thoughts on how this stacks up.

It rocks... I had to download the latest version of Eclipse and then install the Google plugin for App Engine. I followed the demo app and was up and running in the cloud in less that 30 minutes with a site working off my own domain. I can deploy a new version of an app in a matter of seconds.

In another 30 minutes I've learnt the basics of how to use JDO (persistance) and now can start thinking about building a scalable web app. Using servlets is very straight forward and with JDO I think the amount of code you need to write is pretty minimal, basically you can just focus on the task at hand.

The dashboard in App Engine looks pretty good so you can see exactly what's going on.

It will be interesting to see how many others choose App Engine to be their platform of choice. I think for a startup that wants to get something up and running quickly and not to have to worry about hosting costs initially this is a really viable option. Nice work Google.

Round the Bays 09

2009-02-14T13:33:00.003-12:00

Well it was another epic Wellington days for the Round the Bays run today. Thousands of Wellingtonians packed the start line at Frank Kitts for the 7km dash around the bays. I wasn't quite keen enough to do the 1/2 marathon - we'll see what next year brings!

It was great to have a crew from work all keen to enter this year. I completed the race in under 32 minutes - we'll get the official times out of the paper tomorrow. I paced myself pretty well and went the same speed the whole way with a short sprint at the end in the usual Forrest Gump fashion. I'm pretty pleased at how I went - I didn't feel exhausted at all the whole race other than the dash at the end. It was really hot!

Its was a cool event and good to see so many people right on the pace - there is plenty of fit people in Wellington that is for sure!

Fun day at Eastbourne

2009-01-31T16:46:00.006-12:00

After a great sail at Pauatahanui Inlet yesterday we headed out to Eastbourne for the Wild Winds fun day event. It was pretty strong breeze with most pretty comfortable on 4.0's and wave boards. I rigged my 5.4 on my speed board.

Sheryl took some awesome photos - the kitesurfers were pretty amazing with their insane air time.

Dave had a new RS Slalom MK III on the beach which looks pretty radical with the shortened boom length - will be keen to try one sometime soon.

Saturday fun

2009-01-23T15:18:00.009-12:00

Went for a quick run round the bays this morning to get motivated for the day.
I then had another great sail in the Ditch, it was pretty windy - was on my 6.2 and 104.
It was a bit choppy so only managed 28.4 knots today - great condition for practising slalom gybes. I've uploaded a few photos to Flickr

Great fun!

Flying in the Ditch

2009-01-10T17:14:00.014-12:00

Had a great afternoon sailing in the Ditch (that's Evans Bay) today. The southerly was around 15-23 knots so I had my 6.2 and 104 slalom board rigged. My best time of the day was 31.2 knots. A few more photos on Flickr

Cruising to San Francisco

2008-10-14T03:28:00.004-12:00

We headed south towards Santa Cruz. The wind farm just on the edge of the Interstate Highway was amazing. We decided to do a splash more shopping before we got to Santa Cruz - not that we hadn't already seen enough shops!

The next morning we had a quick look at Google Maps as we'd be travelling the previous day without a detailed map of California which makes navigation a bit tricky when you have multiple main highways running in parallel - "winging it" was not an option today.

Our first stop along the way was the Apple HQ at Cupertino. We drove onto the campus and proceeded to drive around "Infinite Loop" - a cool name for a street and saw lots of press hanging around the side entrance to the press conference for the new MacBooks.

Next stop was Mountain View to have a look at the GooglePlex. Just a few minutes down the road and we were there. Again we drove around the buildings and had a good look. The atmosphere at both Apple and Google was really cool - these guys sure know how to build a really nice work environment - plenty of open and green areas for their staff to chill out. We then got back onto the 101 and headed for San Francisco.

2000 miles

2008-10-12T12:00:00.002-12:00

We drove back to Las Vegas and spent a night at the Excalibur. The next leg of our trip took us through Death Valley and then staying the night at a place called Beatty. From there we drove through Yosemite National Park in the snow and ended up in Oakdale.

It's amazing the contrast in going from a dry place like Death Valley to snow all around in just a few hours. Sheryl has written heaps more detail on her blog and we've uploaded quite a few photos.

We've clocked up just short of 2000 miles in the PT Cruiser - so we'll easy tick over 2K as we head to San Francisco.

Route 66 and Grand Canyon

2008-10-10T04:52:00.000-12:00

We picked up a PT Cruiser (much to Sheryl's disgust) and headed for Flagstaff. I'm lucky I have such a great driver - Shez took to the roads like a duck to water. The copilot had general navigation under control - the road signs are shocking over here so it was often it a bit of follow your nose. Only a few wrong turns after about 1000 miles so not too bad. We reckon Chrysler did a deal with all the rental car firms cause we've never seen so many PT Cruisers. Their would be one for about every 20 cars on the road and at least 2 either side of us at any shopping mall. Sheryl now has 7 pairs of new footwear - I just can't keep up!

The Grand Canyon was awesome and it was good to see lots of the countryside.

Vegas Baby!

2008-10-08T04:38:00.000-12:00

We arrived in Vegas a long time after we left Rockford! We boarded our plane at Chicago O'Hare airport after the usual full body inspection (SSSS Security check) expecting to be in Vegas 3hrs later. Shortly after getting on the plane, the pilot advised us that our plane was broken and they were looking for a replacement for us. Eventually (like an hour later) they found a plane so we all had to get off and board a new plane.

Mc Carran Airport was pretty cool - slot machines as soon we got out of our arrival gate - a cool train to the baggage area and then a quick taxi ride into town.

Sheryl has blogged about this already so I won't go on - heaps more photos to show you that we haven't uploaded to Flickr.

The place was huge, it is setup to cater for thousands and thousands of people every day. The casinos and hotels are massive with thousands of rooms at each place. The streets were clean, heaps of people everywhere but everyone was chilled out and having a good time. I really liked it.

Chicago was cool

2008-10-07T03:30:00.002-12:00

We had a great time staying with Nicky and Gavin (Sheryl's cousin) at their place in Rockford (about an hour west of Chicago). It's interesting to live in suburbia for a week and see all the subtle differences in the lifestyle over here compared with back home in New Zealand.

Heaps of the housing here is condo style - from the outside the houses look the same - but the owner can add their individualism on the inside. The gardens in these neighbours were immaculate and no fences anywhere. Interesting to see houses here having basements, so the they are actually way bigger than you realise cause a good chunk of it is underground. Central heating is pretty much standard as is a 42" Cable TV, a huge fridge and oven.

Food is an interesting one to look at - I've been gob smacked at the size of meals, soft drink bottles and food packet sizes in the US. Everything is pretty much 50% bigger - no kidding! Softdrinks are dirt cheap. You can get 2 x 24 pack of Pepsi for $9 - which is about $NZD 16 - so about 30cents NZ a can - easily less than half the price we pay. Bottled water is cheap too - you buy that in bulk as well.

Dining out - you have heaps of choice - pretty much every place has a drive through option as well - pricing is about the same as NZ. I found the drive through drugstores (chemists) and bank's slightly amusing.

On to clothing and footwear .....where do I start! The range available is massive and pricing varies from ridiculously cheap to really expensive. On the whole, things that are way cheaper include jeans and alot of labelled sports clothing. Shoes are generally alot cheaper as well. A good pair of Levi's can be found for $30US so thats about $NZ 53 - easily half the price we'd pay back home. You do have to shop around though as you could pay double in a non "outlet" store.
Running shoes are heaps cheaper here - a good pair will set you back between $35 and $85 .

If you want electronics and computing gear - you aren't really going to save anything - Apple's are the same price as back home - you get a bigger range of accessories over here - but pretty much the same deals.

Sheryl has already posted a great summary of our time in Chicago. We have loads of photos up on Flickr too.

Thanks again Nicky and Gavin for your great hospitality - next stop is Vegas.

Fantastic Florida

2008-10-03T11:27:00.005-12:00

Shez has already written a great summary of our 3 days down in Florida.

Cocoa Beach was really cool - I wish we could have spent some more time there. The local Ron John's surf store was bloody huge and it is open 24 hrs a day! We had a place right on the beach, which despite the stormy weather was pretty awesome.

I really enjoyed the trip across to Tampa - a splash of shopping at Orlando on the way there. I think my girlfriend is a shopaholic but thats ok because apparently I've become one too!

Clearwater Beach was so much fun - simply the best beach I've ever been too.

We caught up for lunch with the guys from Wufoo at the Cheesecake Factory in Tampa. It was cool to share some stories with young tech entrepreneurs from the other side of the planet and hear their take on it as well.

The interstate highway's are just amazing - pretty much 3-4 hrs in a straight line back down and across to Miami for another night at the Hilton before an early 430am start for our flight to Chicago.

Miami madness

2008-09-28T14:27:00.000-12:00

We got picked up by the Super Shuttle at 910am to head out to Newark International Airport for our flight down to Miami. We were scheduled to stop over in Charlotte for an 1hr before flying to Miami International Airport.

All went well until we in line to take off for the last leg to Miami when the captain said we were returning to the gate as we had a cracked window down the back of the plane. He then went on to advise us each passenger window is in fact 3 windows -1 cosmetic and 2 structural so this was a simple procedure to fix. We took off about 40 minutes later heading for Miami.

About 1/2 hr out of Miami we were told there were thunderstorms that were bad enough to have closed the airport and as we running low on gas we were diverted to Fort Myers. We stayed on the ground there until the thunderstorms had moved on and finally took off again to head to Miami. We finally landed, grabbed our bags, got the courtesy shuttle across the Interstate to the Hilton. Thoroughly exhausted we arrived at our destination at 910pm - some 12 hrs after we left Jacqui's apartment in New York.

A night on the town

2008-09-27T16:41:00.003-12:00

We've just got back from a great night - went and saw Katie Holmes and John Lithgow in "All my Sons" on Broadway.

The lights in Time Square at night are amazing.

Off to Miami tomorrow - have got quite a lot of flying to do to get there so it'll be an early night - he says at 12:46am!

Natural History

2008-09-26T10:23:00.003-12:00

We caught the train uptown and walked up the west side of Central Park and went to the Natural History museum.

After wards we headed down to the Apple store on 5th Ave and went to FA Swartz - the coolest toy store you'll ever see.

We're off for dinner up in Harlam tonight - will upload some photos tomorrow.

Power shopping

2008-09-26T02:26:00.004-12:00

Got back to New York at about 10pm last night thoroughly exhausted from pounding the pavements at Woodbury Common - an outlet shopping mall north of New York. We were shopping non stop for 5 hours and barely touched all the stores. Every brand you could imagine was available, some at ridiculous prices. $10.50 shirts from Quicksilver, $30 Levis were among the bargains I grabbed.

There are some photos on flickr from the last few days. We're off now to go to the Natural History Museum and then off to the Apple Store on 5th ave.

New York on foot

2008-09-23T14:28:00.005-12:00

We walked for miles today, all over Brooklyn, back across the bridge to downtown Manhattan which was really cool. The girls did some shopping at Daffy's - I snuck a few goodies into the bag too! Managed to navigate our way to Chinatown for some dinner and then checked out a few of the shops down there this evening. Really tired - but been a great day.

Sheryl and I took heaps of photos, we're uploading them to Flickr now.

Downtown in the Big Snapple

2008-09-22T11:40:00.005-12:00

Had a great last few days in New York city. Find out more on Sheryl's blog.

I survived my first cab ride to Penn Station - quite an experience.

Have a look at all our photos.

Golden day in San Fran

2008-09-17T12:23:00.006-12:00

Blogging down at the Apple store in downtown San Francisco cause we can. The Apple store is jam packed at 520pm in the afternoon - the new iPod Nano's are here - in their fancy chromatic colours.

The golden gate bridge was awesome - will post some photos tomorrow.

To do lists and prioritisation

2008-09-16T09:41:00.003-12:00

Here I am at the 11th hour about to pack my bag for a month long holiday in the US.

I've refreshed my to do list, only 8 items still to do - totally under control - one of which includes trying to fix a leak in the pipes under our sink! Somehow I think I might not pull that one off.

Very timely to see an article on Particle Tree about prioritising feature development

The nations pride is restored

2008-09-14T13:00:00.003-12:00

It was of the greatest games of all time between the All Blacks and Wallabies.

Carter showed his precision at converting the points and went across the line for one himself.

I knew we could come back from behind. Pretty nail biting at the end - how many times have we seen an Aussie sports team get ahead in the last minute - it was our night this time!

Spring is here

2008-09-13T09:05:00.006-12:00

We had an awesome time going for a walk through Percy's Reserve yesterday. Check out our more of our photos

I've also started a flickr feed on my blog to share our photos while we are in the US. Just click on the flickr puzzle on the right to see our latest photos.

I also found a few old photos from a few years back - windsurfing at Eastbourne.

In the cloud

2008-02-23T16:23:00.004-12:00

I'm really impressed by the efforts of Cloudo. Their take on the future of computing is refreshing. Developing applications looks straight forward, I'm picking they're on to a winner.

Wellington turns it on

2007-11-18T19:58:00.000-12:00

Had an awesome day out at Eastbourne yesterday with the lads tuning our new windsurfing kit. Sheza got some great shots - I'll upload some more tomorrow.

Initial impressions of the new RS Slalom MK II 7.2 with X9 is that its an awesome rig. I haven't really been powered up on it yet, as the wind was only peaking at around 15 knots in the gusts yesterday. It has excellent response when pumping on to the plane and seems to really want to go for it downwind. I was pretty happy with a speed of 28 knots despite the wind maxing at 15 knots. Looking forward to a bit more wind.

The Falcon 104 is a really sweet board, it is so effortless to sail. I think the acceleration is insane in light winds. I'll be very keen to see what it is like in a bit more wind fully powered on the 7.2

Really cool to see so many out there, the grass rigging area is great.

The Wellington summer is off to an awesome start!

Smarter phones

2007-11-03T15:02:00.000-12:00

Many of us early adopters have been waiting for this time for the last 6 years. Finally the hardware and software is coming together. Let's hope Google and some of the new age telco's spur the innovation on a bit faster. An interesting article about Andy Rubin in the NY Times, worth a read.

No tunes at NY Marathon

2007-11-03T14:24:00.000-12:00

The 40,000 odd runners in this year's NY Marathon (Sunday) have been advised not to wear their ipods due to safety reasons. I'd expect many to ignore this ban - running without music is a painful experience for most of us as I discovered yesterday when my nano battery was flat!

Spotting trends early

2007-10-20T10:26:00.000-12:00

Since Xmas 06 we've had the news that the iPhone was coming, weve had the launch of the late vista and the delay of leopard os x. We had the launch of new iMacs and the explosion of facebook. Apple delivered on the iPhone then went and launched the iPod touch and video nano. Microsoft announced surface computing and sold quite a few zunes. Dell remodelled their desktop line, starting offering the old xp and started selling boxes with 2gb ram as cheap as 1500 with nice large wide screens. Adobe announced air and bought buzzword and put video in flash lite. Google continued to make money look like an abundant resource with soaring revenues.

So what can we make of this. We re kind of going through a phase where some really cool and practical hardware has hit the shelves at great prices. Apple decided to go for the wealthy end of the consumer market with its multi touch technology. Microsoft for whatever reason chose the old school business end of the market for its stunning surface computers. In the next while we'll see these two titans clash from two different directions. Apple will win the consumers over. I was wrong with my confidence in vista. Os x leopard is simply a joy in modern computing that will increase the swing to mac even more.

As hardware prices fall apple are in a great position to get every mac user to upgrade. Its so worth it. Chances are their loyal users will have iPods and iPhones. Apple really needs to launch a digital camera line.

Once Apis are launched to take advantage of these improvements in the user experience then software developers will have work for ever. Good design will count for lots. The hybrid of client based apps with web connectivity will be the smart way to build a flavour of apps. Completely online will be better for others - no rules. 3 has just unlocked the chains on telco skype - that will change the game forever. Best time ever to be involved in helping shape the new economy.

We haven't seen the end of the os yet. Far from it. Apples visual search with cover flow is great. Once surface computing hits the main stream desktop then we ll have a really elegant way to deal with information overload. I cant wait to get all the info trapped in emails into really fast and visually impressive applications. Anyone still reading. The game has only just begun. There are opportunities everywhere. Those that dont spot the trend will die.

An hour with Bill Gates

2007-09-21T17:58:00.000-12:00

Definitely worth a watch - the next 5 years in the tech industry is going to be incredibly exciting! The man is a legend for what he has done and continues to do - now with his focus on his foundation work.

Always on internet

2007-09-21T08:11:00.000-12:00

Some cool news that can only be but good news for us down under - Google may be planning to lay a pacific cable - due to be up and running by end of next year! (by 2009). UPDATE - more details on background to this.

What does this mean? Lots of things - for starters......increased data caps for kiwis and aussies - that's basic supply and demand. It may also mean faster round trips for internet to and from the US.

And what about the last few miles ? Apple are ploughing ahead signing up telcos in Europe to support the iPhone. Its interesting to see how many WIFI hotspots there are in places like the UK and Germany. And with the announcement of free WIFI for iPhone users in 7500 odd hot spots we are getting closer to an always online environment which is cheap for mobile users. This is great news to try and support the best of both worlds in the interim while 3G internet is still too draining on mobile device batteries.

What I can't find the info on yet but will no doubt surface in the next few days will be how much coverage does these 7,500 hotspots actually give you. And what will be the charges for iPod Touch users? That will be a interesting one but no doubt well thought out by the Telcos.

Safari is the killer application on the Touch and iPhone - if a good high speed experience can be offered for next to nothing over WIFI then we finally have information at our fingertips - just think of all the applications - its mind boggling - and bloody exciting for tech heads. Just as the teenagers that adopted MySpace paved the way for the older generation to get hooked on Facebook (I caved in and just signed up - its not bad!), it will be the teenagers with their Touches that pave the way for awesome applications.

Safari 3 is so much faster at rendering complex webpages - I hope it is too on the iPhone & Touch too - early reports show it is. I'm picking it will be the browser of choice within 18 months (more than 30% market share).

Say goodbye to the scientific calculator on the college kids shopping list - say hello to the iPod Touch! Just think about it! Yes the device is a game changer - free college WIFI will have to be offered as well.

End to end internet is almost here - always on internet - always in your pocket.

Startups making the world a better place

2007-08-27T22:12:00.000-12:00

Don Dodge has posted an interesting interview with Y Combinator's co-founder Paul Graham. I really like the fact that once entrepreneurs have made it a lot of them want the next generation to follow in their footsteps, for the benefit of mankind.

Some useful insights to grab from the interview as well, the models we use down here in New Zealand may not have quite the right slant towards the garage startup as they should. I'm such a fan of 2 or 3 people working out of a bedroom or apartment and building the start of something great over 3 months or even longer.

History in the making

2007-08-20T22:06:00.000-12:00

I just stumbled across a post about the oldest domains on the internet, the comments are well worth a read, 22 year ago, wow! Its fascinating how the web evolved into what it is today and I'm sure we'll all have a chuckle in 10 years time as to what we are doing today.

I'm confident there are some garage startups in the making that will come from nowhere and drive the next wave of innovation. The web today is too primitive but there are signs that slowly but surely good things are happening on all the main fronts (networks, hardware and software).

The overall computing experience is still overly complicated. There are plenty of opportunities out there still to think different. Reinvent yourself today!

AT&T launches the iBox

2007-08-18T22:21:00.000-12:00

Just been catching up on some overseas news. This one is classic, iPhoner's have been receiving their first bills from AT&T. This poor lady received her invoice in a cardboard box, all 300 pages of it! Apparently you can request to have a shorter bill sent or even just view it online but the longer format is the default. Nice to see she saw the funny side of it and posted a video on You Tube - classic :)

The fact that AT&T has cardboard boxes in supply for packaging their invoices is an amazing logistical feat in itself- you would have thought someone would have clicked on to the ridiculous amounts of paper and cardboard being used at AT&T in the last week.

Update - there is an 5 min interview with the lady on YouTube - she sends 30-35K txt's a months - thats ridiculous - lets say she is awake for 16 hrs a day, so thats like a txt every minute she is a awake for the entire month - she must have her numbers wrong.

Actually she does send 28-3kK texts a month - she is the chick that has her own channel on Justin.tv - iJustine - thought I recognised her.

Check out her blog - www.tastyblogsnack.com

VOIP for iphone

2007-08-15T00:21:00.001-12:00

A cool 3rd party app lets you run Skype within Safari on your iPhone. Its not the real Skype but uses the Skype API to give you almost the real thing by the looks of it. Tuned for the multi touch iPhone of course.

www.skypeforiphone.com from your iphone.

But why do I need an iPhone to try it? I don't actually...... It detects the browser so blocks Firefox, but I noticed it doesn't detect your client so I just tried it in Safari and it worked pretty damn well. User interface could do with some polish. Wait till Flash player 9 comes out for iPhone and that will be sorted.

So that must now mean that the iPhone is the swiss army knife for 07.

Apparently Skype are cool with this app as well. Not much they can do about it if you can't install apps on the iPhone officially yet anyway.

Office apps showdown

2007-08-13T23:34:00.000-12:00

Some are already calling it "the ultimate leave behind" , the next cab off the rank in the Flex powered world is Slide Rocket, which has been under the radar for quite a while.

SlideRocket is built using Flex and is a designed as a replacement for Power Point with the extra benefits of an always online solution (collaboration, easy archive etc). The user experience looks fantastic.

It puts itself in the same class as Buzzword, which is no easy achievement. Both of these apps will have offline versions when released which will utilise Adobe AIR.

Absolutely awesome guys. Can't wait to get my hands on this one.

Nice article on Wired goes into more detail and suggests Adobe may be soon entering the Microsoft vs Google space of office productivity apps themselves. Interesting times.

Bring on summer

2007-08-11T17:16:00.000-12:00

We're well past the shortest day now - its getting heaps lighter in the mornings - so almost time to dust off the windsurf gear for a big season.

I am looking to extend my time on the water and think that the new breed of light to moderate wind slalom boards and rigs might be just the ticket.

The new RS Slalom (MK II) is due out in November so I will probably hang out for that in a 7.2. I am undecided on a light to moderate wind slalom board, probably a 105 litre will be the ticket now I weight a bit more and this would complement the 7.2 really well in 8-18 knots, well maybe 10-18knots as I'm not sure how early they plane. I'll change down straight to my RS 6 6.2 on my 78 litre, by which stage I would be fully powered and in control until its gusting 30 knots. Over 30knots in choppy seas is actually really challenging in Wellington harbour, despite what people say, they actually are probably not going any faster than they do in around 20-24 knots, unless the water is really smooth and steady which we sometimes get at Eastbourne, in which case I'd probably stay on the 6.2 anyway and try and dial up 32-34 knots.

The 5.4 RS4 works really well on the speed strip so I'll be staying with that as well. It will be interesting on that gear this season, being slightly heavier I hopefully will move closer to the golden 40 knots, more realistically probably 37-38.

Anyway - I can't wait!

Working Class Millionaires

2007-08-04T12:00:00.000-12:00

Have just read a really interesting article in the NY Times about Working Class Millionaires. Hal Steeger who has worked for more than 10 startups in his time has about $US 3M in the bank but still works long hours. He says he wants his kids to have good work ethics as well so continues to work. There is a 5 minute video in the articles if you don't feel like reading 4 pages.

Its nice to know that for some people that once they make it big they don't lose passion for doing cool new stuff.

The First Real web-based word processor

2007-08-03T13:21:00.000-12:00

I've been following the progress of Virtual Ubiquity pretty closely . They have just flicked the switch on Preview 4 of Buzzword. You can now import and export Word 2003 Docs in XML format. I think this is the tipping point in functionality for the wider community to realise these guys are hot property.

So I tried opening a word doc and it just worked, the layout wasn't too challenging but it was perfect on my screen, in my browser with auto version control and the ability to invite anyone to view and make changes.

Virtual Ubiquity have just removed the biggest barrier from stopping us all from using this online word processor. Sure I use Word at work but now I can safely transport documents both ways so now I can use Buzz word all the time and not have to worry about my work mates not been able to read my documents.

A few UI tweaks have been made as well which improve the all round usability of the app.

I'll keep you posted on how I get on using it this week.

Nice one Virtual Ubiquity.

Update - haven't done a lot of word processing this week - but have found that Buzz word really spoils you - I can't wait for an equivalent spreadsheet or presentation maker - viewing powerpoints via Gmail just doesn't cut it. I'd really like to see a hybrid all in one but I guess Virtual Ubiquity are best to just to stick to their core offering for now and really refine what they've got.

Take control of your spending

2007-07-28T21:22:00.000-12:00

I was catching up with the posts on Radar the other day and came across an interesting post from one of the guys at Wesabe.

You can now upload your bank statement lines from any bank in the world straight into Wesabe using a nifty new firefox extension.

I thought I'd give this a try on the flat expense account - sure enough 3 minutes later I had Wesabe programmed (via the Firefox extension) to automatically login to my internet banking (BNZ) every 6 hours and fetch any new transaction. I was really impressed as I was typing in Bank of New Zealand it just appeared on the list as I set it up. Logging in to my internet banking site took less that a minute to browse to the right account and select a Quicken file to export to, Wesabe then captured the downloaded file. I tagged a fortnights worth of income from the flatties and me and then tagged our expenses for the month. Wesabe now tells us at an instant what we are spending on Power, Gas, and Telstra (Internet,Phone,Sky). It bloody rocks!

I'll hook up my personal account as well to see where my money goes - things that instantly come to mind are how much do I spend on lunch a month and where? How much do I spend on petrol? How much do I spend at the pub? With Wesabe now keeping an eye on my spending I'll now know without having to keep a (slow) google spreadsheet up to date.

I'd recommend anyone to do this ...it is dead easy to setup. Lets compare our results in a month or so at the pub we spend too much at!

How slow?

2007-07-24T23:53:00.000-12:00

Yahoo has just released a cool new add on for Firebug called YSlow. Seems pretty good at ranking your pages and gives you some simple things to do to improve the speed of your sites.

Putting javascript at the bottom of pages, thats an interesting one, am still learning something everyday.

UPDATE - the stats tab in YSlow is very useful.

Flex app gets some press

2007-07-24T23:09:00.000-12:00

Frequent reader of my blog know I'm a big fan of Virtual Ubiquity's Buzzword online alternative to a traditional word processor application.

Here's a cool story about the 11 person startup that was in the Boston Herald on Monday.

Seems to be a wise move they are going for the 20-30 year old age bracket initially, and starting with a free version first then paying version later.

They seem pretty confident that they are miles ahead in the online word processor space. I tend to agree. There isn't that many people out there that have built decent Flex apps yet. There is so much potential for Flex apps, and since they can be skinned using Photoshop or Fireworks the sky is really the limit. Version 3 is probably the time for developers to start seriously looking at the Flex platform for application development.

Young Gun potential

2007-07-16T22:00:00.000-12:00

14yr old Sebastian Kornum could be the youngest windsurfer to land a forward loop. Nice one Sebastian.

I remember the days when I was a 15yr old sailing a Tiga Swift 325 in 35 knots. I couldn't boast doing a forward loop back then but worked out how to run across the state highway and get out of the shore break before a car would come around a blind corner and take me out!

Really cool to see the young guys pushing the sport at a young age.

Gran Canaria 07

2007-07-08T23:33:00.000-12:00

The Gran Slam starts tomorrow!

Can't wait to see some video footage of the RS-Racing sail (RS 7). The cambers rotate like a dream so it will be interesting to see if Team Pryde nails it at the gybe marks.

Dunky has been going pretty well on North lately and its his home turf so Micah will have a lot to contend with.

I wish my parents had owned a windsurf school in Gran Canaria when I was a kid!

Plastic fantastic

2007-07-07T11:43:00.000-12:00

After finding out all about the Boeing 777 yesterday I noticed Boeing talking about the 787 in the news today. The Dreamliner is insane, up to 50% of the plane is made out of composite rather than aluminum. This means a massive increase in fuel efficiency (20% at least). Some industry commentators believe Boeing will increase market share to 70%(currently under 50% - Airbus has been killing Boeing lately) . Airbus are years from having anything close.

The time that it takes to build a 787 has decreased as well, its built more like lego parts snapping together. Boeing has worked closely with suppliers (I guess much the same way Dell has done) to streamline the manufacturing process.

Very cool. Check out this video

The race to freedom

2007-07-07T09:04:00.000-12:00

So on Thursday (day 6) we learnt that the iPhone could be unlocked really easily so you could use it as an iPod without a phone. And now on Sunday a week on (day 9) we learnt that we can have command line access.

It'll be great to get to use it on the local telco network, add SQLite and google gears and we'll start to see a whole new breed of business applications that are robust for the real world.

Red rings of death

2007-07-07T08:25:00.000-12:00

Interesting news from Microsoft on xbox 360 repairs - they've set aside over $US 1B to reimburse anyone that has paid out of their own pocket to get their 360 fixed and also to prepare for the many other machines in the wild that may have this problem. Obviously they've made some manufacturing change so this doesn't happen in the future.

It gets you thinking that with so much pressure on to get to market some things will fall through the cracks. Software can be patched relatively easily in comparison but hardware defects are a real problem.

Who'd want to be in the game of selling leading edge consumer hardware. I'm sure Apple still does, they've been around the block numerous times and factor in defects. Traditionally Apple hasn't been so caring about problems with their ipods - i.e they let the consumer take the hit to their pocket. That may have to change with the iPhone which apparently has huge margins and consumers are becoming more aware of the tech giant. Commentators have already pointed out that someone can't be without their phone for a minute so Apple will need to invest heavily in customer support, a temporary loan and replacement program.

At first glance it seems that Apple may not have learned as their iPhone battery is not able to be replaced without tech support - you can't remove it yourself! Every other phone allows you to do this, unless they've magically invented the i-cell that doesn't need replacing a lot of consumers will sour over time. They've already announced a fee ($US79) to charge consumers that want a battery replaced but it takes 3 days to get your phone back, you can get a loan phone but it will cost you an extra $US30.

So the multi-billion dollar question is how far ahead are Apple with multi touch? Other device manufacturers has licensed Adobe's flashlite so can offer the sort of GUI that people will now expect but their phones don't have multi-touch. I don't think it will take very long for them to catch up at all. Companies like Samsung should be watched. Interesting times ahead indeed.

Tribute to 777

2007-07-06T08:23:00.000-12:00

Today, 7th July 2007 is a great day apart from the fact that it is forecast to only reach a high of just 7 degrees in Wellington. I just googled this to see if we had finally escaped the evilness of last year's 666.

According to Wikipedia "As of June 2007, the Boeing 777 is the only major airliner never to have suffered a hull loss accident". A great achievement in safety design, having been in the skies commercially for 13 years.

Looking head I wonder if the 888 will surpass the iPhone as the greatest phone of the moment. Being able to wear your phone sure does sounds appealing, I think Nokia are on to something there. It's logical that Apple must have a more compact version of the iPhone in the works though, I wonder if they can do mulitouch in the size of a Nano?

iPhone been compared to Teddy Ruxpin

2007-06-30T22:41:00.000-12:00

Classic.....some irate non AT & T customer has had to wait hours to get their phone activated...

"It's like I got a Teddy Ruxpin and had to wait a day for the battery delivery," harped one user on the www.engadget.com Web site. "It's annoying that everything is crippled until activation is complete."

Sounds like a lot of customers have been up and running in minutes though. Will be interesting to hear feedback as the weeks unfold, and to see the market get flooded with iPhone accessories.

Word on the street

2007-06-26T21:29:00.001-12:00

David Pogue of the New York Times has had an iPhone in his pocket for the last two weeks.
His favorable review of this new space age device highlights a few key things. AT & T's network is really slow - they are charging $US20 a month for unlimited internet - probably about as much as they can get away with! Imagine your vodafone 3G card when it reverts to 56kb - thats what viewing webpages is like. Luckily in WIFI hotspots it rocks.

No flash player is installed on the iPhone. My predicition is that this will come really soon. Theres no reason it can't be done after all the phone is running OS X - or is it? Apple has a pretty strong partnership with Adobe so I'm pretty sure they will be damn keen to get flash running on the device. They have You Tube so appear to be converting to the videos to their H .264 fancy format.

The development community is slowly discovering (via Flex) you can code an elegant interface with nice animating panels, fading messages etc in a handful of lines of mxml compared with a lot more in javascript/css . With the caching of the core UI components being built into future flash players I think this will push flash content ahead of AJAX style content and be especially usefully on low speed network powered devices .e.g. the iPhone.

Kudos to Apple for simplifying the signup process for the iPhone through their iTunes software.

This device can only get better and better. It will be really interesting to see if other Tech companies can keep up with the Apple innovation. As phone CPU's become more powerful overtime the elegance of the core OS will give Apple the flexibility to add some really cool things to this phone (I know the OS is becoming irrelevant on the desktop but on the phone it will add some core things that current phones just can't do). Imagine the phone running a webserver - I can think of some great applications straight away.

Will they do a nano version of the phone - I can't see why not unless the footprint is already stretched as it is. A smaller screen would have to be cheaper but I guess with a decent cpu, ram etc you may not save much money.

I can't see it being hard at all to crack the phone so it can run on any other GSM network - without the awesome visual voice mail though.

Thinking different

2007-06-23T09:34:00.000-12:00

I was just having a quick look over the posts on Y Combinator when I came across an interesting blog post by Paul Buchheit - he's the smart chap at Google that created Gmail.

He basically says that with any new product ideas you can put them into three categories : obviously good ideas that are hard to implement, obviously good ideas that haven't been done yet and bad ideas.

So we can take from that is it best to stay away from bad ideas....wrong!

"Instead of endlessly debating whether an idea is good or not, we should find faster and cheaper ways of testing them" (Paul Buchheit)

He gives an example at Google where they dismissed an idea as bad (video upload) when in fact it was a really good idea. He thinks, at best smart people only have a 50% chance of getting it right. I tend to agree.

So with most people staying clear of your particularly bad idea why not just build it and show that your idea actually has merit.

As they say a picture is worth a thousand words but a working concept can bring a "bad idea" to life.

I've been mucking around with Fireworks CS3 and Flex Builder 3, getting familiar with the typical workflow of putting together a very rapid prototype. As I'm getting more and more used to how MXML (the Flex markup language) works I am thinking that the cost of producing a beta product has got even cheaper, so not only can you show that your bad idea is actually good, you can have a working prototype linked up with a database and your business logic in next to no time.

So can we do even better? Well I know for fact that Flex Builder 3 is going to make this even easier in the next few months when they introduce the database connection wizard with CRUD tools (thats create, update and delete pages for the non acronym aware folk). So if you are just starting out your career or better still are at school or uni then start learning Flex 3 today.

At the same time as learning Actionscript 3 (which is based on ECMA script , so is Javascript 2) and MXML you can actually have some fun building stuff that works. Having a simple real world problem to solve is great while learning and you may find your "bad idea" pays your uni fees once you go live with it. At worst I predict you will have learnt one of the most sought after technical skills in the 2006-2010 workplace.

Capital Gains Tax

2007-06-16T12:25:00.000-12:00

Just read an article about the Reserve Bank proposing capital gains tax on property investors in today's newspaper. It is all based on the problem of housing affordability in New Zealand.

The crux of the problem is down to the fact that take home pay for the average kiwi is too low and current house prices are now way too high for young people to get into the property market or those in the market looking to step up the ladder.

Its kind of ironic that the Kiwi Saver scheme is potentially going to make this worse. I think middle age working kiwis basically fall into two camps, those that are already well placed on the property ladder and those that never jumped on board. The latter group are probably those that will get into Kiwi saver as they can't afford a house deposit and want to try and save something.

Westpac economist Dominick Stephens raises a good point in the article, saying the first thing Kiwis do with a bit of spare money is buy a house - if they started a business they would be employing people.

When you compare house prices overseas relative to incomes, NZ's prices are way too high. I don't think anyone wants to spend the bulk of their income on mortgage repayments but in NZ it is the current reality.

I believe the current prices will be sustained unless, CGT is introduced. Any other investment gets taxed so houses need to too. The property investors honeymoon will finally be over and hopefully more kiwis can enjoy a higher standard of living in the future, creating more productive workers and fueling growth in our economy by more funds being channeled into business growth.

Anyone beg to differ?

Adobe opens up

2007-06-10T22:01:00.000-12:00

The Flex 3 SDK beta and Flex Builder 3 beta are available now from Adobe Labs. As Adobe is moving Flex to open source they have now opened access to their bug tracking system and full roadmap for Flex 3 and Flex Builder 3. This is great to see, especially for setting a benchmark of quality standards.

One thing that impresses me alot with Adobe lately is their constant flow of new developments. These guys get software development, they get marketing and now they are starting to win some big numbers of developers over. With a significant swing of users moving to an Apple OS and some moving to Ubuntu the Flex platform will become crucial for software developers to master. Adobe are the first to admit they have to make it easier, and with the recent Fireworks CS3 and now Flash CS3 they are letting designers skin and build components in their favourite/familiar design environments and easily import them into Flex Builder.

I guess I was thinking optimistically when I got my hands on the first Flex Builder beta a few years back, shocked to see it didn't have the rapid CRUD tools that have come standard since the mindblowing Dreamweaver Ultradev (back in 2000-01). Adobe are finally putting this into Flex Builder 3, not in this beta but looks like it will be implemented in the next few months. Thats super cool because it means a whole lot more people will be able to build Flex applications rapidly.

Apollo has been renamed to AIR, not sure if Adobe are the next Nike but it looks like they are "just doing it" pretty well at the moment.

Forgot to mention the caching now available in Flex...about time, now apps can be as small as 50KB.

Kiwis cranking in Cyprus

2007-06-09T17:33:00.001-12:00

I have been keeping a keen eye on the relatively new RS-X Windsurfing class (the new Olympic fleet). Barbara Kendall is leading the womens fleet after the first day. Jon Paul Tobin is doing ok as well. Good to see the kiwis up there with the best in the new fleet.

I am dead keen to have a go on a RS-X board, although with my 3 season old hollow NT98 and RS4 10.6 it's like comparing a BMW to a Toyota in comparison(or so I think). I think the RS-X would be quite a nice board to sail, with a high comfort factor, although a bit weighty and no where as stiff as the NT. I suspect in the light airs it trucks upwind. I remember the day I learnt to rail my Diamond 67, all of a sudden pointing 20 degrees higher in the lighter breezes. Same designer for the RS-X as well I believe - Jean Bouldaires (spelt right?) - he did the old AHD Diamonds.

There has a been a trend for light wind slalom to become popular again so I can't wait to have a go on a modern 130 litre board with an 2008 8.0 or 8.5 V8 when they come out. Nothing like trucking upwind to the airport and down Evans Bay and around to Oriental Bay in a steady 15 knot Southerly. If this gear goes upwind ok then I'll be able to launch off our boat ramp in a southerly which is a big bonus. Only 3 more months of Winter!

Cheap calls to landlines are here

2007-06-07T17:48:00.000-12:00

Take a deep breath.......

Throw away the handset

Skype Pro has launched. Unlimited toll calls to landlines for about $NZ3.40 a month (10 Euro for 5 months) using Skype. Just checking it out now

UPDATE....Ok its awesome over Paradise Cable...just tested calling the folks....no lag at all...so I can now talk from my laptop and not have to hold a phone to my ear. Super convenient, super cheap for calling grandma in Nelson and friends in Auckland.

So for those of you that pay $5 a month for unlimited calls to a friend that doesn't have a broadband computer, its now cheaper using skype and quite possibly a whole lot easier if you have a microphone in your laptop.

For business tolls this is insanely cheap. Anyone offering outbound national phone support around NZ, your bills just got a whole lot cheaper.

So the only thing NZ is missing now is local Skype numbers and unlimited rates to cell phones from Skype and of course 111 dialing...anyone know why that is?

No more cables

2007-06-07T17:24:00.000-12:00

At last, someone has come up with a way to do away with power cables. In the last few weeks we have seen things not slowing down at all, with surface computing, street view maps and now appliances that can be powered or charged wirelessly over a distance of around 4 metres.

Think laptop, cellphone, ipod...Very cool.

Showering in the jungle

2007-06-02T13:26:00.000-12:00

Really cool to see the announcement of Surface this week by Microsoft. Behind all the smoke and mirrors this new human computer interaction (HCI) is known as multi touch and is probably the biggest jump we'll see in HCI for quite some time.

Examples on the net show both horizontal and vertical surfaces being used, with multi user interaction on one surface or virtual interaction with another surface user elsewhere.

Most of us have only ever developed interfaces aimed for point and click and keyboard inputs. Having developed touch screen interfaces as well my experiences are single touch interfaces can offer improvements in workflow, customer interaction and engagement. I've had a dabble at mobile phone and tv interfaces as well which are quite dull in comparison. Multi touch takes human-computer interaction to the next level and makes what we do at the moment look rather old school so this is really exciting.

A few commentaries I have read have pointed out that this technology has been available for sometime. Popular Mechanics has some more in-depth coverage on the development by Microsoft. I'm not sure where Perceptive Pixel fit in, but check out their video of vertical multi touch panels which shows off some cool ways of using applications available today like Google Earth.

Microsoft Surface uses applications written using WPF / Silverlight which is available today. The underlying OS is MS Vista. Microsoft are focussed on the business sector initially (due to the $US8-$10K price tag and reckon we'll start to see these in casinos and retail shops later this year. There is some cool examples of applications developed for mobile phone shops, restaurants and hotels. Can't wait for our first bite with the iphone.

Our kids will just laugh when we tell them that optical mice were a huge leap over the trackball variety, just as disks were over tapes, ink jet over dot matrix, broadband over dial up, iphone over ipod. I ponder what will surpass surface computing?

The really cool thing with this is that computing is now being taken to the masses in everyday furniture and appliances. Kiwi kids gotta get that IT degree. I think they call it lifestyle computing. NZ needs to leverage this and make sure that F & P has the first consumer surface fridge that lets me order a top up of groceries by reaching for more milk or grapes. Imagine the wall tiles in your shower being a waterproof multi touch display, you'd be able to shower in a virtual jungle while scanning your news feeds and viewing some holiday photos.

Update - check out the ibar

go street view

2007-05-29T17:58:00.000-12:00

Have just been catching up with the latest at Where 2.0 on Radar.
Go check out google maps - "street view" rocks - looks like its only US cities at the moment.
Very cool indeed!

Site of the day

2007-05-28T16:54:00.000-12:00

I remember when I first stumbled across interactive design on the web (that must have been when Flash 5 had just been released) I used to be a fan of Macromedia's 'site of the day'. I haven't checked it out in years, I guess its still going at Adobe.

Here's my pick for today, Australia.com, their revamped site is really well done. You can find out a whole lot of interesting things just by changing the map layer options, very cool and intuitive interface design.

Put the pedal down

2007-05-27T22:31:00.001-12:00

Got to love the internet, haven't heard from Boogie for a while, just been chatting to him on Google Talk. He's currently living and working in Zurich. His blog is a real gem ......Speed sailing is another passion of mine, looking to get out on the water a lot more soon to put the pedal down!

A winning formula - can some young kiwis take a slice of the pie?

2007-05-27T16:33:00.000-12:00

Just read an interesting interview in Business Week with Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigs List. The company is one of the top 10 busiest sites in the world, yet only has 25 staff. Revenues are about $US25M. One would think a similar site would work well here in NZ due to our small size of country and small town feel. Most kiwi's don't even know what Craigslist is. Australia and New Zealand seem to be quite unique in the way that the big media giants have basically carved out the online market for classifieds and are charging good money for it.

Since the lead up to their sale, Trade me cleverly turned itself from an auction site to an auction/classified hybrid and started to cash in on real estate and more recently jobs. Good on them for doing so, lets hope a lot of that sale money gets reinvested back into the NZ economy to get the tech sector really cranking.

But now that the dust has settled and Trademe is owned by ozzies (Fairfax) surely a local startup that has no news media links whatsoever could take on the classified space and just leave auctions to Trade me (winner takes all for sure, Trademe rocks for auctions).

Its not gonna be easy as the other ozzie media giant on our shores (APN) is trying to take Fairfax on with Sellmefree which hasn't had any real uptake, especially in Wellington. Shows how good the Trademe brand is in the nations capital.

Food for thought huh? Any young whizzes out there, a good after school project.

The man who does it all

2007-05-22T17:44:00.000-12:00

A cool article in the Wall Street Journal about Markus Frind, the sole guy that runs PlentyofFish. His dating site pulls in between $5-10M US per year from ad revenue. And its the 96th most busy website in the US according to Hitwise.

We are so in a flat world now. So if you're thinking of doing a startup, this proves those wrong that say you can't do it all by yourself.

Office replacement is getting closer

2007-05-21T21:58:00.000-12:00

I just checked out Virtual Ubiquity's site, which has had a makeover. Looks like they are getting close to launch Buzzword. Have just applied to be a beta tester, hope they let me in.

Here are some screenshots.

Just found a 9 minute screencast, they have done an awesome job, so much functionality that we just haven't had in web based word processors to date. They've added some great small touches as well. This will definately be up there for app of the year. It will be interesting to see what their business model is. They could go down the free route and wait till one of the heavy weights buys them out, or it may just be good enough to go solo and charge a price if you have say more than 5 docs. I'd be willing to pay an annual fee for this for sure.

Update - I've been accepted to be a beta tester. So to try this out I've just popped into Wellington Library for an hour before I catch a bus home. Went to cafenet.co.nz and purchased a 70mb token and logged into Buzzword. This is great, sitting here in the library, lots of light, big space and silence. So I've just started to create a product specification document. I am pretty blown away at the functionality (of Buzzword that is), its great. It looks like borders aren't in this version but I've managed to write the start of a spec, import in a wireframe protoype PNG exported from Fireworks CS3. The doc looks great and its all stored in the cloud. I'm in a good mood - so thumbs up to Virtual Ubiquity. This now leads to me say that I am now a happy mobile worker, the dream of online office apps is here. This is quite exciting, they've taken the bar to the next level.

Justin is still going

2007-05-20T15:50:00.000-12:00

I can't believe it, Justin is still going, 63 days, 15 hours, 50 minutes and counting. The guy deserves a medal!

New thinking

2007-05-20T10:02:00.000-12:00

Came across a great article that gives the youth of the business world one up on the established players. I think this theory can be equally applied to young vs established companies as well. Just look at the new battle in the accounting software market in NZ - the established player doesn't think the game has changed, they see the bag of balls is still mainly black and white.

Caught with wrong degree ?

2007-05-20T09:14:00.000-12:00

An article in the Infotech today mentioned a student that graduated from Vic with a BCA in Info & E-Commerce but could not get a job since he graduated in October last year. Apparently he had the "wrong degree", graduating with a BCA rather than a BSc or BIT.

Let's face it, having a degree is not a guarantee of a job. Maybe the applicant should have got some part time work experience in the industry while they were a student. I'm sure most employers would view a BCA student favourably if they had some "runs on the board" in their chosen field.

My suggestion to the student, is to be more pro-active and apply for jobs that don't exist, this really shows an employer you want to work for their company.

We don't need these sorts of stories in the press, there is a massive skills shortage and to discourage students from doing a major in Information Systems is ridiculous.

True rumours

2007-05-20T00:44:00.000-12:00

Truemors launched not too long ago, the "greatest" list is now pretty good for those that want to be up with the latest "True Rumors". I'm going to trial visiting the site everyday for a week and see if it can help me keep my "surfing" time compacted. Does anyone know if there is a RSS feed for just the "greatest" section" so I can just pull it into my reader?

Quite a lot of people think the site is not so hot, well that's what the entry on Wikipedia says anyway.

I guess someone needs to make "truemorvision" with regional and tagged filters. So lets say I was interested in "politics" but only in "NZ" then that could work quite well.

So how long is a truemor before it's just called news anyway?

How cool is that

2007-05-20T00:13:00.000-12:00

I've been fascinated with mapping websites for a while now, I guess I just like exploring new places. Twittervision3D has got to be the coolest mashup yet which utilises FreeEarth, try the full screen mode...how cool is that!

New web economy starting to crank

2007-05-19T22:33:00.000-12:00

Nice article in Time mag about 37 Signals and the success they've had to date. Interesting to see they hint at building financial software in the future.

Apple prank

2007-05-16T20:40:00.000-12:00

Its amazing how quick news travels, Apples stock dropped by $4 billion in one day when news came in that the iphone wasn't going to ship till later in the year and new version of OSX until next year.

But it was a Hoax, Apples stock is still down $1.25 billion for the day

Improving the workflow

2007-05-16T16:18:00.000-12:00

Just had a good session using Fireworks CS3 for some screen mockups.

A few notable finds :

1) You can now have multiple "pages" in one PNG file which is great for organisation and improving your workflow. So each page can have multiple frames and you can share layers across frames and pages (e.g. you'd use that for your navigation, any site wide backgrounds etc). Being able to keep an entire project in one PNG is great. Its like having a desk with an infinite size paper tray.

2) Nine slicing can now be added to your components (so when you scale components like Flex buttons they look great at any size). All the bundled Flex components have 9 slicing on by default so behave really nicely on your page. I often resize assets during each round of GUI tweaks so now my mockups still look as good as the day I first made them.

It would be great to be able to automatically convert a PNG with multiple frames and pages into a PDF with every screen combination - not sure if that is a feature in CS3- will have a hunt for it.

Tracking user sessions the easy way

2007-05-16T14:58:00.000-12:00

Tape Failure has just come out of beta - its not an online backup service as the name may suggest, but a very cool way to track users on your website, just play the tape and watch. Here is a video demo from Centernetworks.

Its one thing thinking you know what your customers are doing, but now you can watch every move of the mouse, just add a bit of Javascript to each page and you're rocking.

I hadn't heard of Crazy Egg either which allows you to see where users click on your site using a heatmap.

So, no excuses for not knowing what your users are doing on your site.

Startups living it rough

2007-05-16T00:06:00.000-12:00

One things certain for sure, Y Combinator's startups has got lots of people talking. Paul Graham has been getting a fair bit of criticism which I reckon is totally unjustified. From the sounds of things Y Combinator is the ideal launchpad for web startups. I just read a classic article about the residents at the "YScraper" living it rough that was published in the San Francisco Chronical . Well worth a read, as it explains to the outside world what life is really like at a startup.

2007 - the year of the RIA (finally)

2007-05-10T10:24:00.000-12:00

RIA's (Rich Internet Applications) seem so old school now, I was excited about them back in 2002, when the term had been newly coined by Macromedia.

A few trends to take notice of, O'Reilly Radar has just announced that their Flex 2 book has absolutely flown out the door.

There are also some great improvements in the overall workflow with the new CS3 suite from Adobe. I've been using Fireworks CS3 for a few days now and stumbled upon all the Flex UI components in the library, which now allows you to export your PNG straight to MXML. On the face of it that sounds awesome but I think it is a bit 'version 1' to be called decent just yet, though the thinking is definately going in the right direction. I'm so behind the idea of allowing analysts to build rapid prototypes, as they say a picture tells 1000 words.

The upgrade for Flash, now called Flash CS3 allows you to export your flash movie clips (with component like functionality) as SWC's and import them into Flex. This is really cool.

Just downloaded Dreamweaver CS3 last night, so haven't taken that for a run yet. Will post a note when I have.

Well, anyway, things are finally hotting up in this space. Microsoft with their recent Silverlight announcement and now Sun with Java FX. There are some really impressive demos posted on the JavaFX site. Its totally open source. The only glitch I've noticed is the initial lag to view the apps - seems real sluggish to me. But the output is damn impressive. The Tesla site rocks.

Mega Mergers

2007-05-04T11:54:00.000-12:00

Rumors have started again of Microsoft wanting to buy Yahoo, this time the price is at $50 billion.

As much as I like Google which I think is great for basic search, email storage and rss reading I think there is much room for improvement in their online apps. With the amount of developers and wealth they have, surely you'd think they would have come up with some decent eye candy online apps by now. I don't think the ultra conservative GUI is the best for office productivity apps.

I know that Google still tries to run projects in small teams but I just wonder if their size has got to them.

I guess this is the cool thing about the internet, the more successful an online company becomes they no longer are at the cutting edge of innovation which opens up plenty of opportunities for the garage startup.

Here is an article from the New York Post on the "rumor" (is that the us spelling of rumour?)

Marathon Blogger

2007-05-02T21:59:00.000-12:00

I hope my last two blog entries keep the fella in Germany going until my next post, how dare he acuse me of going quiet on the blog front :) I've been busy trying to teach and inspire the up and coming IT sparks of our nation! Thumbs up to my 2nd year classes - you guys are really starting to get into the groove of questioning what you are told - thats great - I love a class that keeps me on my toes.

Plumbing, Plasterers and Traffic Jams

2007-05-02T20:54:00.000-12:00

I've been thinking about the internet connectivity problem we have in New Zealand.
I'm not sure actually how bad it is, I know a lot of people are kicking up a fuss and I know personally I've had hours of lost productivity.

I'd be keen to see a simple map (similar to a road map showing SH1 etc and interconnecting routes eg. SH58) of the NZ internet highway. The map should show the speed limits and how many lanes the roads are (i.e. how much traffic throughput the links can stand). I don't really have a clue but expect the make up is a skeleton of fibre that runs the length of the country and links to all the cities off the main back bone. I suspect there are 2 or 3 main backbones owned by Telecom, Telstra and maybe someone else. I'm guessing the fibre goes into all the Telecom owned exchanges and then its copper for the last 0-10 km (for those stuck with ADSL), and those lucky enough to have Telstra Cable get the cable to their front door. I take pity with the rural folk. I know companies like Citylink have fibre that spans the length of the CBD in Wellington and parts of Auckland. Does such a simple map exist? Can someone make one with a simple google map, make it public so people can update it to make sure its accurate.

So on to the current problems..... getting disconnected, getting lag, getting slow download and upload rates. I experienced all of these when I switch back to ADSL last month. Two years ago I quite happily talked on Skype to a friend in Japan while at the same time be remote desktoping into their computer on a 256kb jetstart plan. Getting disconnected 8 times in a day (I had to reconnect using my router control panel) and experiencing massive lag and not being able to talk to someone less than 30km's away on Skype was a bit of an eye opener when I recently had Jetstream turned back on. This is in a house 10 doors up the road from where I used to live, so all the variables had stayed constant. What had changed?

Basic! So we have an overloading problem at the exchanges, its probably easily fixed cause I don't expect the fibre to be overloaded just yet. ADSL2+ is way overdue and their isn't enough equipment in the exchanges. Is this the guts of the problem that would give most of the nation temporary relief? I hope so. Its like deja vu - remember back in 1998 when we all have 20 buck paradise dial up and all of a sudden one day started getting kicked off the net? That was cause of overloading.

How can a startup expect to launch a global business in NZ at the moment with such bad infrastructure? I'd really want to launch a new idea in New Zealand (as the small population would be great for a test market) but my business is flawed without good internet connectivity. How much is this actually costing our economy, just think if the next 700 million dollar gorilla doesn't get off the ground cause it can't be proven in NZ?

To fix the equation there needs to be reliably cheap internet connectivity for the citizens. Online hosted apps make sense but only if we can be guaranteed we can always access those. Its a bit of a frustrating time for web architects, its like being a plumber that creates a master piece in the bathroom but the pipes are leaking everywhere. Just because we can't physically see the water dripping from the T joints with the internet doesn't mean that as a nation we can let this drop. If they can build the bypass through Wellington for a 30 second improvement to get across town then surely they can sort this problem. If the anti smacking bill can get rushed through then surely can't the anti slow internet bill get given some attention?

I'm not into Telecom bashing, they are a commercial operator and their shareholders expect a return on investment. The problem is that the people at Telecom weren't visionary and gutsy enough to lay fibre everywhere. They should have but they didn't. They would have got their return on investment cause there would have been demand. Build a new highway and people will use it, we all know that.

So what to do now? Simple. Get Telecom to tell the nation exactly what the current problem is in simple terms so my mum can understand why she can't talk to me on Skype. I.e is it just a lack of ADSL 2+ exchanges with enough plugs or do we have a problem with fibre links around our nation? Tell the government how much and how long it would take to fix this. The government then decides if it should own the infrastructure or buy a huge chunk of Telecom and invest the funds and let the experts get it sorted in the shortest time period.

I welcome comments, cause I really want to understand the extent of the problem we have. Have I been too simplistic in my thinking? Are there flaws in my assumptions, please let me know.

In case you're wondering about the title, I've covered plumbing and traffic jams. If any knows of any good plasterers then let me know, the cable guy fell through our ceiling when installing cable the other week. Thats right we have a massive whole in our kitchen , living room now. I thought it was pretty funny and sums up the state of the internet in NZ quite nicely at the moment....broken and need of a decent handyman to fix the cracks.

EC2 and S3

2007-05-02T20:29:00.000-12:00

Great, the computer industry is famous for its crazy acronyms and now to confuse us all they're chucking numbers in there too.

Thankfully the latest from Amazon, S3 (Simple Storage Service ) and EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) translate to readily understandable names that the rest of us can at first glance get what they're on about.

EC2 has particularly grabbed my attention as it has basically shaken up the hosting market and changed the rules. In the era of Web 2.0 we are now seeing the emergence of sites that are generating high traffic rates straight out of the blocks. This is great, but quite a headache for the two kids that have hijacked their flat or parent's cable plan to run a dedicated server to save costs. The only reason they did this was cause getting a dedicated server was too expensive. Any real geek wants full control of their server so virtual hosting is not an option.

But now with the emergence of EC2 and S3 from Amazon we are seeing that the cost of getting a fully fledged server up and running the way you want it is really cheap.

There are examples floating around on the Net of monthly hosting using EC2 and S3 costing $80US a month for running something pretty decent (lots of traffic), so thats about $NZ105. I think thats pretty awesome, cause a dedicated box in a reliably supported NZ data center is going to set you back at least $500 per month (I said reliably supported).

Founders at Work

2007-04-20T22:33:00.000-12:00

Just picked up a pretty cool link from news.ycombinator , with a 40 min video clip of Jessica Livingston from Y Combinator talking about "Founders at Work" at Google.

I've just listened to the first 30 min and can totally relate to the little stories she was highlighting from founders of a heap of startups - those were the days!

Awesome stuff! And for the record, I reckon news.ycombinator has got to be the most interesting news source around. I've been a reader since day 1 and it has the best roundup of stories on the planet.

Its pretty funny, I'm so old school, finally just got hooked on Google Reader - its crazy that I used to trawl the web checking sites for updates. A friend was raving about it a few months ago and I took no notice...ha!

Social lending

2007-04-09T23:21:00.000-12:00

I was talking to my new flattie last night and all of a sudden she started talking about web 2.0. Hey wow, that's cool I thought, rather than discussing what was just on Channel E, or the scandals at one of the big 5 multi nationals (which will remain nameless) I might now get a bit of web 2.0 goodness gossip.

Well within 30 seconds she said , "well - what is web 2.0 ?- there is this guy at work that was telling me about it?". Now I was trying to explain what it was when she took over the conversation and said naaa...isn't it about "social stuff" like that social lending site - zopa. Zope what? I said. "Zopa - the UK social lending site". Funny I had never heard of it...sure enough the site is huge and there is a US based take off called Prosper that is backed by decent cash.

The concept is really neat, people lending money to other people and avoiding using banks. Zopa takes a miniscule cut. But say you want to borrow $10,000. Well, there could be 1000 people that pitch in to lend you the money in total - thats kinda cool.

I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of it, and it turned up a blank on the radar which I thought was really odd cause they are the 2.0 originators.

Apparently Zopa have filed for a patent - I'm not sure of the details of what they can actually protect.

Someone should start a similar site here - it has the classic sniff of a "Ebay" type of business that a local hero should and could own. Kiwis are patriotic and with most of our banks being owned by overseas corporations it would be great to see a kiwi flavour to social lending.

I wonder what one would need to do to start such an operation...I'll go and have a look around.

How to start a career

2007-03-31T12:08:00.000-12:00

I've been thinking about this alot lately.... what is the best way to start a career for a exceptionally talented and motivated IT student based in New Zealand at the moment?

I've come to the conclusion that there has never been a better time to put "do a startup" at the top of your list. I'm in a good position to comment on this cause I'm 27 and spent the last 5 years of my life doing just that. I jumped into founding a startup straight out of Uni at the ripe age of 22 and have never looked back.

The gap between 20 and 30 for a lot of us is our time of freedom, before we get married and have kids (well thats what my uni teacher told me!). For those of us that get excited by the thought of being an internet pioneer it has never been easier to give it a shot.

The recent house price spiral in NZ means that someone graduating today is going to be light years away from being able to afford a deposit on a house so why not forget about the joys of having a mortgage (if there are any?) and get cracking on that first start-up business.

OK, the odds are stacked against you becoming a millionaire but at least you'll get some runs on the board and learn way more than your peers that take a help desk job.

If you are looking for some motivation then check out the great articles that Paul Graham writes. Paul and a few others started a seed fund for hackers in the US last year called Y Combinator

I'll say it again, I reckon we need a Y Combinator in NZ. The thing I really like about Y Combinator which has been running for a year or so now is that they totally expect some of the ideas to "tank". One of the companies that got squashed, has just had its founders start another business which is now flying and is really cool!

I'd say the big difference between old tech startups and web 2.0 startups is the "time to fly". There seems to be a growing perception that 3 months is enough time to hack something together and go live. I'd agree with this, my first startup took 3 months of hacking in a bedroom with a friend to bring something great to fruition and that was 5 years ago. So that basically means you only need enough money to survive 3 months to get something going. The benefits of being a part of Y combinator is that you get introduced to all sorts of "angels" during that time and should have a decent amount of momentum at the end of that 3 months which can make a difference if you are broke!

So go do it, start a start-up!

Inside story from Xero

2007-03-22T19:51:00.000-12:00

Just came across a great post from Kirk Jackson at Xero. He describes the new server and rich client technologies that will be released from Microsoft and how they may be used at Xero.

Xero is a Wellington based start-up looking to do big things in the Accounting 2.0 space, taking on the likes of MYOB. Xero is lead by local tech hero Rod Drury. Rod did a nice presentation about Interaction Design at the recent Mini Web Stock.

If you haven't heard of Xero then you soon will as Hamish Carter is their relationship man(ager)

Webstock video streams

2007-03-19T22:59:00.000-12:00

I missed this event but was really cool to see they recorded all the speakers.
Awesome to see the current buzz in the Wellington internet & software community.

Apollo has landed

2007-03-19T15:59:00.000-12:00

Adobe has just released the alpha version of Apollo 1.0 which is a cross operating system runtime that lets you easily install web enabled apps on your desktop that take advantage of HTML, CSS, AJAX, FLASH, FLEX and PDFs. The apps can be easily installed (and updated) on PC and Mac (and I'm guessing Linux pretty soon).

This is Macromedia's third attempt to get a runtime working that allows access to the local file system. Macromedia (prior to Adobe) had two versions of Central which never really got much adoption, they basically only allowed flash support.

One of the cool things about Apollo is the ability to allow apps to continue to work in an offline state pretty easily as there is good network state detection in Apollo.

I guess it is up to us now to build some killer desktop apps that take can now take advantage of the full web developer arsenal.

Time will tell if there are enough benefits to build apps based on the Apollo runtime or whether developers will rather build offline apps using the new features being built into Firefox 3. I don't think the fact that Apollo has access to the local filesystem is a big enough benefit on its own as how much data do you need to cache locally now that mobile broadband has become affordable.

Update - just read the Apollo for Flex Pocket Guide - bloody good overview of Apollo. The one thing that stood out is that Apollo is not a replacement (in a lot of cases) but a complement for your web based apps. I think its pretty cool from the few demos I've seen and can quite easily see that 2.0 versions of traditional office apps will take advantage of the ability to install into your startmenu or dock and get updates.

Really cool Flex components

2007-03-12T21:49:00.000-12:00

Really cool to see some Flex developers pushing the envelope. Now we can all download and contribute to these as Flexlib is on Google Code. My favourite is the super tab bar -I'd like anyone try and do that as nicely and elegantly using AJAX.

Separation of Duties

2007-03-12T20:43:00.000-12:00

So there are quite a few people comparing AJAX & HTML CSS technologies to Flex & Apollo at the moment.

My opinion is that if you are building a web application that contains content that doesn't need to be Google searchable you should seriously consider using Flex, especially if you are lucky enough to have dedicated developers and designers. There is a good article on Adobe.com that discusses this. It just makes sense, you can totally separate the development of your business logic from the presentation. You have the flexibility to get your analysts and designers on the ball while your developers are elsewhere. Or if the most important requirements are known and your designers are busy you can get your developers going on the business logic before the designers attack the interface.

Ok, so your customers will need to have Flash Player 9, so what, they can download it in 20 seconds and chances are they will already have it with adoption rates going through the roof. Flash Player 9 works within all the main browsers on Win, Mac and Linux.

Now on the other hand, if your content needs to be Google searchable, needs to be easily bookmarkable and doesn't contain state then HTML/CSS/AJAX is probably the better way to go. For sure you can wrestle your way to get bookmarks and state working but its not nice.

I predict we will see a closing of the gap soon as Mozilla starts to play with the donated AVM2 code from Adobe so that apps will be developed in a markup similar to MXML and be compiled at runtime so that content is fully Google searchable.

So its a safe bet investing the time learning to use the Flex platform. To close the door on Flex would be unwise for any software developmement company.

Am I biased? Not at all. I'm currently building websites using HTML+AJAX+JAVA and apps using FLEX+JAVA.

I welcome any comments.

OS becoming irrelevant

2007-03-12T15:03:00.000-12:00

People have been predicting for years that operating systems will become irrelevant in the future as most applications go towards being based in a web browser. Finally in 2007, we are starting to see the swing happen ever so slowly.

The french parliament have just announced they are switching to Ubuntu with Open Office.

In my eyes I guess a couple of key things have happened
1) Firefox has given Microsoft a real run for its money. Linux browsers are now just as good
2) Adobe has released Flash Player 9 on Linux.
3)Apple went Intel and VM products like Parallels let you run two os's concurrently.
3) Broadband is becoming more affordable by the day
4)Mobile broadband is becoming faster and more affordable
5)Finally some development companies are starting to make apps work well in browsers

I guess there are a few parts of the equation to go, like running apps offline in your browser. There are a few apps that work ok offline but most break.

Startup 2.0

2007-03-08T08:12:00.000-12:00

There is an interesting story in the UK Guardian this morning about startups now seeking smaller amounts of funding because they don't actually need a lot of money to get going. They reckon the activity of new startups in the UK is booming and doesn't look like slowing any time soon.

My favourite startup model is based around the funding given by YCombinator in the US - I reckon we need to get this sort of approach going in New Zealand pronto.

So why not give it a go? I know this is a pretty challenging thought for a Friday but have you considered that doing a startup is a viable first career move.

Skype just created a whole new service industry

2007-03-07T20:31:00.000-12:00

Well not quite.... but now I can charge people for calling me over Skype using Skype Prime and it includes video calls. This is awesome and revolutionises how support can be provided for a fee to someone on the otherside of the world....all over the internet. Fantastic! If you think about how you can collaborate over Skype or any other web based tool then you'll see why this is so cool.

In a nut shell, the call is initially free, then the caller decides if they are prepared to pay either the "fixed fee or per minute call out fee" that the person is offering.

You get paid the money via Pay Pal who clip the ticket on the way through with their fees

The real world

2007-03-07T09:17:00.000-12:00

It must be pretty exciting being a student in Wellington at the moment as we have a number of internet/software companies doing cool things - definately a lot happening to distract you from actually doing any work.

So how are you going to get noticed by these guys? Well for a start you've got to be good at what you do. There's no better way than just having a crack at something and then tapping a few people on the shoudler. The cool thing about Wellington IT companies is that the people running them are really approachable people. They've all been in your shoes and know what its like at the bottom of the ladder.

So the first company on your list that you should get to know is our local town hero - Trademe. And how are you going to do that? Easy, start reading Rowan Simpson's blog - I've let him know that there's a bunch of 3rd year students at Vic studing ASP.NET that are really keen to push the limits. He's kindly offered to have a go at answering any curly questions we might have.
Trademe is NZ's busiest website and runs on ASP.NET - so completely relevant.

I'll introduce you to some more cool companies each week as we start to ramp things up.

ASP.NET here we come

2007-03-05T16:36:00.000-12:00

I'm going to start posting some blog notes on ASP.NET among other things to help you guys (my awesome 3rd year ELCM students at Vic Uni) get familar with the technology really quickly. I'm a firm believer in keeping things simple and we should use this approach when developing web applications.

For those that don't know, Wikipedia is a great way to get a quick (and usually accurate) summary on any word/concept/whatever. So its a great start for getting some knowledge on ASP.NET. ASP was the first server side scripting language I learnt back in 2000. I then switched to the Java camp using JSP and then on to servlets which has done everything I've needed to since. For the last 4 years I've only really built Flash based applications & websites so getting response data in XML format only was the norm. I think using a Service Orientated Architecture is great and separating back end programming from front end development is the way to go..(more on this some other time).

So you'll notice there have been numerous releases of ASP. ASP.NET 2.0 is the current release. I think this course primarily teaches ASP.NET 1.0 using Visual Studio 2003. I'll need to check how we can get you guys using 2.0 ASAP as there is nothing worse that working with outdated technology particularly with server side languages. Those AJAX controls for 2.0 look especially cool. I'll see what I can do.

We can however do remote procedure calls without using AJAX - here's an easy example

AJAX components

2007-03-04T09:50:00.000-12:00

I start tutoring a third year ASP.NET course at Vic Uni this week...In my preparation I have been checking out the ASP.NET AJAX control toolkit of GUI components. I'm pretty impressed at the quality of the components which will help with the user experience in developing kick ass HTML web sites.

A few cool things

2007-02-28T09:24:00.000-12:00

I came across Parallels for Mac Desktop a while back. They have just included a new feature called "coherence mode" which allows you to run PC apps in the "dock" without the windows desktop showing (of course the full windows os is running under the virtual machine). This is really cool, I guess these guys will do ok for a while during the transition to web based apps that run on any platform.

Now on to future winners....Adobe is about to launch Apollo which is basically Flash 9 apps with offline functionality. We know that Firefox is going to include offline functionality in the future but my guess is that Apollo will be quite distruptive for a while - it should be launching pretty soon.

Virtual Ubiquity have been lucky enough to get their hands on Apollo and are building a "Word" killer. The word on the street is this is awesome, definately well above the writely/google docs bar.

Done well, flash apps can improve the user experience alot. With the underlying flex presentation layer and simple access to data services a talented developer that gets UI design could easily have fun picking off all the traditional desktop apps one at a time and move them into the future.

Wellington summer sizzles on

2007-02-25T10:15:00.000-12:00

We've had some pretty decent weather lately and the last two Sundays we've had the annual Round the Bays run and Bike the bays events.

There was about 11,000 people out last Sunday for the run and Wellington really turned on the good weather. What a cool event, loads of Wellingtonians having a good time and brisk stroll around the bays. I had a bit of energy left at the end so sprinted the last section and managed to peel off heaps of knackered runners down the straight on Kilbirnie Park to finish in the top 550.
Everyone had tags on their shoes so got their time in the newspaper the next day - that was pretty cool.

Yesterday, was the Bike the Bays event that I was roped into doing. A much smaller crowd at this event, despite the free entry fee. I'd say their would have been 1500 people or so. I decided to do just the 13km race around the bays and back rather than the 32km event. I should have gone for the later as I pulled into first place at the turning point by the Evans Bay Marina and the rest was history. Another great Wellington day.. you can't beat Wellington on a good day.