Month: June 2012

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Weekly Wrap 107: Tribalism and the Gold Coast

So here’s my week from Monday 18 to Sunday 24 June 2012, which turned out to be much as planned. Thank you, Fate.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 143, “Microsoft? Is that still a thing?” I took a sickie on Monday, so this was another Patch Monday (on Tuesday) edition. And that meant we could talk about Microsoft’s new Surface device that was announced early Tuesday morning Australian time. But Kate Carruthers, Paul Wallbank and Benno Rice all suggested this probably wasn’t going to fix Microsoft’s flatline share price and that chief executive officer Steve Ballmer should go. That didn’t go down to well with, um, certain communities of interest.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I visited IBM’s Australia Development Laboratory on the Gold Coast for a briefing about the security stuff that happens there. The Maginot Line story mentioned above was the first resulting media object from this. IBM covered a night at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel in Sydney en route, flights to and from Gold Coast, and a rather lovely seafood lunch.

The Week Ahead

At this stage I plan to return to Wentworth Falls on Monday afternoon and stay at Bunjaree Cottages for the week. Where I live from Friday onwards depends on how we arrange things to deal with the fact that the school holidays start on the weekend.

I don’t have any specific work locked in yet. That said, I do have a lingering feature story to start writing, and other stuff always turns up. And given that that it’s the end of the financial year, I’ll be reflecting on the work I’m currently doing and decide which parts of the mix get expanded and which cut back.

I’ve had a few thoughts already about certain media projects…

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up) and via Instagram. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags. Yes, I should probably update this stock paragraph to match the current reality.

[Photo: Shadow of my former self, a rather pointless self-portrait I took Friday afternoon because I saw my own shadow on the wall.]

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Talking Microsoft Surface and Fairfax on ABC Local Radio

I spoke about two things on ABC Local Radio earlier this week: Microsoft’s Surface tablet-cum-laptop and the staff cutbacks at the Fairfax media group.

I’d covered Surface in this week’s Patch Monday podcast, so my comments on air with Dom Knight reflected the feedback I’d received.

And the comments I made about the Fairfax cuts was based heavily on what I wrote four years ago, “Trouble at t’paper”.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (7.8MB)

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, archived here because it isn’t being archived anywhere else.

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Weekly Wrap 106: Excess rain, trains and depression

My week from Monday 11 to Sunday 17 June 2012 was short (because it contained the long weekend) and annoying (because I ended up staying in four different locations) and cold (because of weather).

Eventually I decided that it was probably better if I just spent the weekend in bed. So I did.

And that’s why this post is so late.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 142, “Apple iOS 6, start-up killer”. I took advantage of the post-long-weekend timing to record an immediate reaction to Apple’s launch of iOS version 6 operating system, chatting with mobile developer Chris Stevenson who was at the launch, and application architect Benno Rice.

Articles

I did write a second article, for Technology Spectator, but it was held over to the following week.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

The Week Ahead

Erm, well, it’s already Thursday, so I don’t see a lot of point in writing a future-past version of this. Or is it past-future?

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up) and via Instagram. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags. Yes, I should probably update this stock paragraph to match the current reality.

[Photo: Waratah Cottage, where I spent the latter part of the week. This photo was taken with the Samsung Galaxy S III, whereas this previous one was taken with my beaten-up HTC Desire.]

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Talking new internet domains on ABC RN Sunday Extra

The other day ICANN, the organisation responsible for overseeing the internet’s domain name system, published the list of all the planned new top level domains — including everything from four entities competing for get .pizza to a cancer research charity after .cancerresearch.

It certainly generated some media interest. One of said media interests was the presenter of ABC Radio National’s Sunday Extra, Jonathan Green, who asked me to explain what it was all about on Sunday morning.

Alas, with only around seven minutes left before the 0900 news, there was really only time to explain what the thing was about — and no time to discuss the various opinions strengths weaknesses and potential for dodginess it all entails.

The ABC has posted the audio on the Sunday Extra website, but here’s my version.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.3MB)

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

I’ll post my own opinions on this another time, or perhaps not at all.

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Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone first impressions

Three days ago I finally got around to setting up the Samsung Galaxy S III review unit that I’d been given. Here are my initial impressions after a few hours of playing around on the long weekend.

These comments should be read in light of what I wrote for Technology Spectator in terms of this new smartphone being a shot across the bows for Apple. But bear in mind that I’ve never used an Apple iPhone, so I can’t make direct comparisons.

I’m also upgrading from a very bashed-around two-year-old HTC Desire, as seen in the photo above. That means a jump from Android version 2.3 to 4.0, and I’m not making clear distinctions between Android improvements and Samsung-specific features — but then I don’t think average users do either.

In other words, this is definitely not a proper review. “First impressions”, I said.

Continue reading “Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone first impressions”