The Yellow Pages is soft-launching its new-look site today. I just tried running a search for restaurants in Mt Eden and got a lot of crap back in the results, led by a Cobb and Co. over the bridge on the North Shore. I was also given the choice of refining the results by "all" or "appetisers" (say wha???).

A search for an electrician in Sandringham delivers pages and pages of results, seemingly listing every sparky in the city. If the new-look www.yellowpages.co.nz official launch is July 1, there's a way to go, lads.

It's always been hard to get a coherent search result from this site, and it looks like its new owners, the sucker Canadians, remain at serious risk of being squashed into irrelevance by the Google monster.

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 3 )

A full-page Herald interview with new Telecom CEO Doc Reynolds today unveils nothing ... other than that he's good at dodging hard questions. Or indeed almost any questions, as over a couple of thousands words we learn exactly zilch about how he intends to tackle Telecom's myriad technical, financial and political problems.

We do learn though that "at 2.04m (6ft 7in) he towers over Telecom Chairman Wayne Boyd" (yeah, Wayne, shape up!), he possesses a "lilting" Scottish accent (awww), and owns a Fender Stratocaster (though he doesn't play it in public). Hopefully we'll learn more about the Doc's intentions by September, when he formally takes the reins.

Amusingly, the Herald's Monday edition "no regrets" mush-fest with Theresa Gattung has given way to a much flintier piece today as Liam Dann let's rip with a withering little essay entitled Gone But Not Forgiven.

Automatic for the people
New rules were announced yesterday about how parliament can be televised. Essentially, cameras have to focus on whoever's speaking, least hijinks by other MPs get posted to YouTube (yes, our representatives have been sitting around discussing how to avoid getting themselves lampooned on Google's video site).

I've had occasion to watch a lot of parliamentary debate, and the 4th form-level of personal insults, juvenile physical humour, childish attempts to distract the person speaking, and outbreaks of toddler-like group shouting - of which all parties are guilty - has to be seen to be believed. And it should be seen. Live web cams should stream all parliamentary debate to a government hosted website (along with most select committee discussion, where real decisions tend to be made). There should be no copyright, with anyone able to pick up the video and post it to YouTube or any site they like. Yes, anyone who gives the finger, says the 'F' word, or comes into the chamber drunk after dinner will have their foibles webcast to the world. To avoid lampooning, all they would have to do is behave.

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

While Apple's iPhone will be released in the US this Friday (with polls showing 12 out of every 10 American's intend buy one), Vodafone has no plans for NZ release (down the track with its switch to GSM, Telecom could now be an iPhone contender too, of course). Still, we can dreamily follow the iPhone's progress online. Shamefully, so-called expert computer publications have again been trumped by a mainstream news site, which reveals eight key iPhone features here - which I think prove the device is worth it's salt and has not been overhyped in any fashion.

I'm a nerd: kill me now
Now I don't want to gratuitously, um, bag Targus. I happen to own a Targus satchel myself, and it's relatively styley and useful for securing my notebook, cellphone and iPod in one handy bag with lots of clever accessory holders. But the new Targus Voyager case (left; $159, Targus), adding pen, ID and sandwich holders? I'm afraid it does rather scream "nerdlinger".

Spooky Park
It beats me why some people have attached such a negative moniker to Auckland's Sylvia Park megamall. A full page ad on page A19 of today's NZ Herald, for the opening of 40 more stores tomorrow, comprehensively refutes the deserted mall thesis by featuring three punters (I counted) plus one slightly creepy looking guy watching them from the edge of the car park.

Posted by Chris Keall at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

The Banking Association has quietly slipped a clause into its new Code of Practise, introduced last week, that banks should be able to access a customer's PC in a case of internet fraud. The idea is that if someone hacks your online banking password and steals money from your account, you - not the bank - could be liable if you have been using "a computer or device that does not have appropriate protective software and operating system installed and up-to-date, [or] failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that the protective systems, such as virus scanning, firewall, antispyware, operating system and anti-spam software on [the] computer, are up-to-date". (Read Stephen Bell's full Computerworld story here.)

That's a very sweeping disclaimer. While it's pretty obvious that writing your PIN number on a sticky note in your wallet is failing your security obligation to your bank in that department, security software, and to what degree it's up to date, is a much more grey area. Losing your life savings for not keeping up with the blizzard of Windows update patches would be pretty rough.

Plus: Is the firmware firewall in your router enough, or do you have to install a software firewall? If so, is Windows' one-way firewall enough? And no antivirus maker immediately releases a fix for a new virus threat. How soon should customers be expected to hit their home PC and update their security software?

As my collegue, Computerworld editor Rob O'Neill points out: "I find security hard - imagine how pensioners feel? Or people with kids downloading stuff?" (Note that while Rob says he finds security hard - hey, I get confused too - he's no duffer. The kid's just finished his first podcast, featuring discussion of the new banking code, plus goodies like an interview with AUT radio astronomer Sergei Gulyaev.)

I can appreciate where banks are coming from as the amount of money stolen online continues to rise. Last year 3.5 million - yes, million, people in the US lost money to internet bank or credit card fraud. (Here, my bank, the ASB, has just reduced its online transfer limit from $800 to $300 a day in reaction to an email scam). And banks have been, until now, picking up the substantial tab. Still, it will be the instinctive reaction of many customers that banks should be able to somehow make their websites safer themselves, and an increasing number will just get turned off online banking altogether - which seems surreal this far into the internet revolution.

Posted by Chris Keall at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

Well, recent media coverage has suggested the link. However, over the weekend I scientifically researched the proposition by watching Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Turns out teens have been doing nasty things with cars and guns since before computer games were even invented, let alone the latest installment of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

Posted by Chris Keall at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 )

Yesterday the news broke that the French government had banned its members and advisors from using BlackBerries, citing a security risk. BlackBerry maker RIM hit back by saying its devices had been certified for use by US, NZ and Aussie security authorities. This immediately had my colleague Rob O'Neill - editor of Computerworld - storming my office to reveal that the ubiquitous smart phone has only ever gained clearance for low-level stuff. While across the ditch during a stint working for The Sydney Morning Herald, O'Neill revealed an Australian Defence Signals Directorate ruling that "Agencies must not use BlackBerry for the transmission of Cabinet-in-confidence, protected, highly protected, confidential, secret or top secret information." The ruling still stands, says Rob. Read his story here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Early this week I chronicled how Blockbuster had hiffed HD-DVD from 1400 of its US stores in favour of only renting movies in the rival Blu-Ray format. Blockbuster NZ, with its individually owned or managed stores, is hither and zither on the issue. But Scott was just down in Queen Street where JB Hi-Fi - a big Aussie chain - has opened a superstore as a beach-head into the NZ market. Amid the music CDs, MP3 gear, printers and consumerables etc, it's interesting to note that JB is only offering Blu-Ray movies for sale. The drongo sales clerk had no idea what drove this policy, but I'll check it out with JB's Ocker owners once the folks across the Tasman wake up later today.

Posted by Chris Keall at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

Multiple dispatches in today:

Our stablemates at Computerworld have uncovered Auckland City Council's wi-fi plans. Read about them here.

Reviews ed Scott uncovered this mind-blowing video on Photosynth; software that takes photos from around the web and tiles them into a huge wall that you can zoom in and out of and rotate around in multidimensional fashion. It's hard to describe, but is very hey-wow breath-taking (as, I imagine, is the amount of hardware required to run it). Check it out here.

More tangentially, Scott also discovered some yachties watching a new island burst out of the sea in exciting volcanic fashion.

And on an entertainment note, I'd like to suggest that anybody who enjoyed The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Red Dwarf that they check out Hyperdrive, screening 9.30pm Tuesdays on Prime and starring the most excellent Nick Frost (Simon Pegg's offsider in Spaced, Hot Fuzz et al).

Posted by Chris Keall at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

A fire alarm yesterday afternoon saw me flee PC World towers. One outside, I found it politic to put Meyers Park between me and the potential fire, and soon found myself in Real Groovy Records. The cavernous Groovy wisely devotes the front of its store to DVDs these days. And smack bang at the front is a modest selection of titles (balanced about 50/50) in the two rival high definition DVD formats, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

The small number makes me think most people are too risk-averse to choose between a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player now, or don't want to shell out more for a combo player that handles both formats. The format war poses a dilemma to retailers, too - though you can no longer count the US iteration of the Blockbuster chain as one of the fence sitters.

Today, The Wall Street Journal announces, 1450 Blockbuster's US stores will hiff out HD-DVD and go Blu-Ray only. The Journal calls it a "major blow" for HD-DVD (although not fatal; Blockbuster will still rent HD-DVD titles online and in 250 stores).

A Blockbuster vice president said 70% of customers had been choosing Blu-Ray rentals. Partly it's being driven by sales of Sony's PlayStation3 (which includes a Blu-Ray drive; HD-DVD is an optional add-on for Microsoft's Xbox 360). And partly because only one movie studio (Universal) is releasing titles in HD-DVD only, while the others either support both formats or are Blu-Ray only.

I called Blockbuster's NZ head office, which said the chain doesn't take sides in the religious war here. Individual store managers and franchise owners can order whatever discs, in whatever format they like.

Posted by Chris Keall at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

As has been previously canvassed in this blog, the music CD's decline is accelerating, with disc sales plunging 20% during the first three months of this year alone.

But there's one act whose CD sales are actually on the rise: Paul McCartney.

The surviving Beatles have been famous hold-outs against the online music wave. And by now it would seem sort of pointless for the band to try to sell any of his classic material over iTunes anyway (is there a fan on the planet who hasn't ripped the band's catalogue to MP3 five years ago?).

Sir Paul as a solo act, on the other hand, is still churning out new material, and has more immediate motivation to get to grips with this new fangled digital download stuff - and you will find his latest album, Memory Almost Full (ho ho) on iTunes et al.

Yet his generational bias also sees him mounting a couple of original campaigns to goose CD sales of Memory as well. On Amazon.com, he 'innovates', if that's the word, with a personal video appeal asking vistors to the site to buy his disc. The clip, which looks like it was that looks like it was shot in a dreary corporate hotel room, also features our one-time pop God strumming 30 seconds or so from one of the tracks on what looks like a Balalaika. The cravenness is reduced, a little, with some of his fopp-ish humour ("buy it for your friends, your enemies, your pets ..."), but it's still hard to see Coldplay following in his footsteps.

Sir Paul's second innovation is to release his new album on Starbucks' new-ish record label. The international coffee chain is selling the disc through its 13,000 stores (including here). Some may see this as more akin to the decline and fall of Western Civilisation than a re-birth of the disc-based music industry. Still, it's worked for McCartney. Reports CNNMoney.com:

"Memory Almost Full," the 21st solo album of McCartney's career, debuted at No. 3, his highest ranking since the No. 2 start for "Flaming Pie" in 1997.

The album's first-week sales of 160,541 copies marked a 33 percent improvement over those for "Flaming Pie," which kicked off with 121,000 units sold. The former Beatle's "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," released in 2005, opened at No. 6 with 92,000 copies.

Incidentally, speaking of digital music, we've now had our stuff together to download some iTunes Plus songs. The short story: the quality improvement over iTunes tracks is just noticeable on a portable player, but very noticeable if you rip your download tracks to a disc and play them on your stereo. However, iTunes Plus tracks are still very compressed and far, far below the uncompressed quality of CD tracks (which are of course 10 times the file size). So maybe McCartney fans with any audiophile instincts should troop down to Starbucks ... . Anyhow, read the full story in NZ PC World July, on newsstands July 1.

Posted by Chris Keall at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

June Consumer features the magazine's annual reliability survey, based on a random survey of subscribers.

Digital cameras get a very good rap. Overall, 93% of cameras up to five years old hadn't needed repair. Rated best are Canon, Fujifilm and Panasonic. Other major brands are rated average, with none rating worst.

So do MP3 players. Overall, 86% up to five years old hadn't needed repair. Sony is rated best, other brand average and none rated worst.

With DVD players/recorders, 92% hadn't needed repair. Rated best are Panasonic, Pioneer and Sony; rated average are LG, Philips, Samsung and Sanyo; and rated worst are DSE, JVC and Transonic (the mind-boggles at who would go to the trouble of subscribing to Consumer, then trundle off to the Warehouse to buy an ultra-budget brand).

The survey also covers TVs, washing machines, microwaves, fridge-freezers, dish washers and retailers' after-sales service.

Later in the June issue there's a survey on computer reliability. In desktops, Apple is rated number one, followed by Dell. NEC-owned Packard Bell trails the field.

In laptop reliability, the top three are Sony, NEC and Dell, with ASUS and IBM trailing the field (IBM's PC business is now owned by Lenovo).

Local heroes Ascent Technology win the after-sales service section of the survey, with the Warehouse last with a lousy, lousy rating ("Please hold for advice on Cellotaping your Transonic back together").

Read full results in the June edition of Consumer, or on its website (subscription required).

Posted by Chris Keall at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

"If you went around saying that in a couple of decades we'll have cell-sized, brain-enhancing robots circulating through our bloodstream or that we'll be able to upload a person's consciousness into a computer, people would probably question your sanity. But if you say things like that and you're Ray Kurzweil, you get invited to dinner at Bill Gates' house - twice - so he can pick your brain for insights on the future of technology. The Microsoft chairman calls him a 'visionary thinker and futurist'."

Yes, the mind-blowing or at least very entertaining Mr Kurzweil (pictured) is back on the interview circuit. The above paragraph is the opening to a Fortune piece. Upload his consciousness into your noggin here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

I was in at Dell yesterday to see its new ATG, a battle-hardened laptop that will compete against Panasonic's ToughBook. Features include an LCD screen that's three times thicker than normal, and covered in a heavy metal lid. Among many outdoorsy features is screen that's 500 NITS, or three times as bright as your average notebook.

A website in Holland drove a car over one of these babies, and Dell NZ is going to try and jack it up for us to do the same, so we'll see. The Keall Mobile is primed and ready to crush.

Dell's ATG doesn't have the motion-sensing technology of some notebooks aimed at rough and tumble industries, or desk jockeys with butter fingers. However, Dell NZ Country Manager Derek Leitch notes that you usually don't drop your notebook straight down (ATG has shock absorbing rubber feet if you do), which would be when motion-sensing tech would be useful for automatically parking the hard drive. At the moment it's more likely to lock your hard drive inadvertently.

Leitch also points out that the ATG has a solid state memory option, where you can go hard drive-less and store everything on Flash memory of up to 32GB. For now, the primary aim is toughness. Unlike a spinning hard disk drive, a Flash chip (like SD) has no moving parts to damage. But Flash memory is also faster and all round more convenient. For now, it loses out in capacity to hard drives (whose mainstream models will reach 1 terabyte shortly, making Flash notebooks today amusingly analogous to the floppy drive-only PCs of yore). But that will change.

Interestingly, Fujitsu has already bought out a notebook in its mainstream Life Book series that's Flash memory only (in 16GB or 32GB "SSD" or solid state hard drive options). So far they're only available in the US, and pretty pricey. But again, that will change. We like change. And things that don't break.

Posted by Chris Keall at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Or at least works out a way to make really, really huge, life-like print-outs of his paintings. Printer companies are always pulling publicity stunts to promote their latest models, but this effort to showcase HP's latest DesignJet and a new vinyl printing process called Epiflex is very cool. It sees copies of National Gallery paintings being unveiled around central London. Check out the BBC's pictures and video here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Forrester Research reports it took the world 27 years to reach the 1 billion PC mark, which we're looming to hit during 2008. But by just 2015, that number will have doubled to 2 billion PCs in use. The bad news for those hawking PCs in developed markets: 775 million of those new PCs will be sold in China, Brazil and Russia.

Posted by Chris Keall at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

The trendy young crew driving Orcon's trademark bright purple muscle cars are now civil servants.

State-owned enterprise Kordia has bought Orcon, the country's fourth largest ISP, for $24.3 million in a deal closing July 2.

.

When asked whether Kordia would buy another ISP, Kordia CEO Geoff Hunt said, "This is not the end. We see a lot of consolidation in the ISP market, and we intend to grow in this area." Hunt said Kordia would spend some time "bedding down" the Orcon deal before lining up the next one, however.

Orcon has around 75,000 customers, with around one third on broadband plans. The North Shore-based company is 80% owned by founder and CEO Seeby Woodhouse, and 20% buy chief technology officer Mark MacKay. Woodhouse will stay on as a director, but hand day-to-day running of the company to Scott Bartlett, who graduates from GM to CEO.

The two companies will maintain separate boards and separate offices, with Orcon functioning as the retail arm for the state-owned Kordia (Trevor Mallard and Michael Cullen are the shareholding ministers), which has previously operated as a broadband wholesaler.

Asked whether other ISPs who are potential Kordia wholesale customers could be put off by Kordia owning Orcon, Woodhouse said many would find Kordia and Orcon a less intimidating proposition than the other two wholesalers in the market with retail arms (Telecom with Xtra and TelstraClear with paradise.net and clear.net). Kordia is adding WiMax and metro wi-fi elements to its wholesale broadband offerings, and will shortly open a "wi-fi zone" in the Auckland suburb of Parnell. Kordia has also opened tenders for a "small WiMax network somewhere in the North Island".

Hunt said local loop unbundling was a key reason behind Kordia buying Orcon, and that it would not have been in the hunt for an ISP if LLU was not imminent (Orcon's Bartlett expects the Telecommunications Commissioner to announce LLU pricing on or around November 9).

Bartlett says it will be business as usual for Orcon customers, though they will notice an expansion of its home phone line business that has been ramping up over the previous two months. The company remains committed to its deal with Vodafone, kicking in during October, which will see an Orcon-branded version of Vodafone's cellular service, complete with purple Orcon SIM cards.

Under this Mobile Virutal Network Operator (MVNO) arrangement, similar to Virgin's re-sold 'virtual' phone service in the UK, Orcon customers will not get access to Vodafone 'live!' services, but Orcon is lining up alternative content partners. Bartlett points out the company already has some experience in this area through its home page, Orcon.co.nz, which features Digirama content, and is about to reanimate its experiment streaming video from Sky TV and Auckland free-to-air music television channel Alt TV.

Anyhow: $24.3 million dollars! Seeby's main man Scott is well entitled to call it a "genuine Kiwi success story" (North Shore locals who've seen Seeby's Ferrari roar past are already aware). Woodhouse founded the company 10 years ago this September, apparantly with only $100 in his pocket, and maintains it has always been profitable (and the evidence is good: he's never had to take on debt or, more significantly, especially today, bring in another investor). And in case you're wondering, I've had my calculator out, and 80% of $24.3 million is $19.44 million

Posted by Chris Keall at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

State-owned enterprise Kordia, the organisation formerly known as BCL (back when it was part of TVNZ, as its transmission arm), says it's going to buy a "retail ISP". Last year, Kordia made a play for ihug, which ultimately got snapped up by Vodafone.

So who's Kordia ended up snagging? ICONZ? Orcon? Some slice of Telecom? None of the above? I'm going to trot along to the acquisition announcement 12.30pm today at Kordia's HQ in Newmarket, Auckland to find out, so check back in later today. All will be revealed.

Posted by Chris Keall at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Yesterday I was despairing of finding the perfect FM 'deadzone', or quiet spot on the radio dial that could be utilised by my Griffin Roadtrip, a widget that streams songs from your iPod to your car stereo via a narrowcast, in-car FM transmission.

I appealed to lecturer Andrew Dubber - perhaps New Zealand's leading radio expert (if currently on secondment to a university in the UK) - for assistance. Herein lie the Dubber Files:

Hi Andrew,

I'm currently road-testing Griffin's RoadTrip iPod FM transmitter and am having two inter-related problems:
1) Where can I find a listing of all FM broadcasters in Auckland (and NZ) and
2) Can you recommend the ideal FM dead zone in Auckland.

Currently I'm beaming songs from my Griffin to my car stereo on 88.1 which is good for around Mt Eden and elsewhere, but gets a lot of interference once I hit K-Road and the CBD.

Thanks,
CK

Hi Chris,

There's good reason for that interference. You're sitting in the only country in the world where any citizen who wishes to broadcast can just turn on a transmitter and start talking. They have to be of a certain power output (under half a watt) and in a certain area of the spectrum, known as the 'guard band'.

In fact, there are two guard bands: One from around 88-89MHz (which is a problem in Auckland, because Mai FM is already there) and another between 107 and 108. It's called a guard band, because its intention is to protect different services from each other by allowing no high powered transmissions in between, say FM broadcast and Air Traffic Control.

Since it's actually possible to transmit over about a 2km radius with under half a watt, given a bit of height and some serendipitous terrain, Low Power FM stations make the most of the rules by picking densely populated areas. As a result, there are quite a few inner-city LPFM stations. I'm surprised that you're not getting interference in Mt Eden, actually -- and if I was living in NZ the first thing I'd be doing right now is setting up a low power FM station for the Mt Eden community. Probably on 88.1FM.

However, the Griffin will give you the complete spectrum to play with, and you may actually be better off finding gaps up the other, less densely packed end of the spectrum. Most larger FM stations in NZ are spaced 800kHz apart (ie: 89.4FM, 90.2FM, 91.0FM, 91.8FM) so you might
find that a centre point between those stations might be a better option. The upper end (in the 101-107 range) is still less densely packed with radio stations.

The Ministry of Economic Development's Spectrum Management Services will have comprehensive listings of all licensed radio stations (try: spectrumonline.med.govt.nz/).

The Society for Low Power FM Broadcasters maintains a list of all the current unlicensed micro-broadcasters, and it will probably be pretty much up to date -- at least for the Auckland area where the society is based: www.lpfmnz.com/modules/stationdb/

Wikipedia has a list of radio stations in NZ(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radio_stations_in_New_Zealand) but it isn't sorted by frequency, so it's not very helpful for your purposes.

Good luck finding a dead spot in the most 'radioed' city on the planet.

Cheers,
Andrew

Andrew Dubber
Senior Lecturer in the Music Industries at UCE Birmingham
and author of the New Music Strategies Manifesto:
www.newmusicstrategies.com/manifesto

Posted by Chris Keall at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

After weeks of speculation on this site and others, Telecom has confirmed it will move to the same cellular network technology as Vodafone. The big switch had become more or less inevitable as 80% of the world has moved to GSM (yah! Sim cards) and big phone makers like Nokia have abandoned development of mobiles for CDMA networks like Telecom's. A big kicker was Telecom's key global roaming partner, Telstra, abandoning CDMA in Australia. Initially at least, Telecom will build a network that will support both technologies.

Has Telecom planning such a move all along, or is it an emergency roll-out? Read Juha's Friday Fry-up take here.

Posted by Chris Keall at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

This week I've rigged out the Keall Mobile with Griffin's RoadTrip iPod auto accessory, which plugs your 'Pod into your car's sound system. Like a number of such devices, it consists of a souped up iPod dock, drawing power via your car's cigarette lighter, that streaming your 'Pod's songs to your car radio via a short-range FM transmission. The RoadTrip ($139, www.macsense.co.nz) has a couple of features lacking in cheaper models. It doubles as an iPod charger, and you can also easily detach the FM transmission dock and use it indoors to stream music from iPod to living room hi-fi.

It only takes a minute or so to install the RoadTrip, which comes with a double-jointed extender arm that lets you position the dock, and your iPod, close to the left of your steering wheel. Music quality is roughly comparable to what you get on FM radio.

There are two main catches. Compared to Buckman and Bartley, I'm not tall, but my left knee still managed to knock the RoadTrip out of the cigarette lighter/power plug a couple of times. The other problem is finding a place on the FM spectrum that's free from radio stations, so your radio can cleanly receive the transmission from your Roadtrip. This is easy to set up. You find a quiet spot on (or "dead zone" in industry parlance) on your FM dial, then punch the same frequency into your RoadTrip. In my case, in Auckland, I started off at 88.1FM. All went well until I got into the CBD - specifically along K-Road, where there's a proliferation of ultra short-range cult stations like Fleet FM. These narrowcasters suddenly started causing a lot of static, and had me trying dangerous RoadTrip-retuning-as-you-drive manoeuvres.

In the US, Belkin (another maker of such devices) has a website listing FM deadzones by Zip code. Sadly it doesn't extend to any other country, let alone Godzone. I've got a plea in with radio tech-head Andrew Dubber of Dubber & Spoons blogging fame to try and find the perfect Auckland dead zone (please, no jokes about Glenfield). And there's actually few places that list all users of the FM frequency, especially the little guys (one of the better ones I've found is Fiona Rae's on the Listener website). While I await word from Mr Dubber, I'm open to all suggestions.

Posted by Chris Keall at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )

I don't usually catch much daytime radio. But driving around the other day to roadtest Griffin's RoadTrip iPod car accessory (more of which tomorrow), I caught Jim Mora's afternoon show on Radio New Zealand National. Guests Helen and Chelfyn Baxter, of Mohawk Media name-checked a groovy little service called Naymz. In brief, Namyz pulls your blog, YouTube, Flickr, social networking and other posts from various corners of the web, then assembles them into a personalised home page.

Other services do a similar thing, but Naymz also buys Google Ad Words, promoting your personal Naymz site toward the top of a potential employer/stalker/curious bystanders Google search for your name. I'm wondering what's in it for Naymz. From the site's privacy statement, it looks like it sells demographic data about it's users, and to get its "Premium Service" (including search engine results that promote your own name more than Naymz, plus profile of people who check out your profile) costs $US4.95 a month.

Posted by Chris Keall at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

The long weekend found me - naturally - doing some PC housekeeping. Specifically, I wanted to copy a five gigabyte wodge of songs from our home PC to my roving notebook, just to make sure we had a back-up.

These days there are a how bunch of options for transferring or backing up huge files, including wired and wireless networking, DVD-RWs, and network attached storage devices for the home market (that is, terabyte-sized hard drive boxes, formerly the preserve of big companies, now being re-deployed for humongous home video libraries and photo collections). And we cover these in July PC World, on newsstands July 2.

But a quick and easy product I used chez Keall was Targus's new "Mobile Data Transfer & Synchronisation USB 2.0 Cable". It's a simple little 1.5m length of USB 2 cable, with PC and data synchonisation software built into it (in that fat, python bit near one end). There's no driver discs to install. I simply plugged one end of the cable into our desktop PC and the other end into our notebook. After a minute or so the cable's software had self-installed into a temp file, and started a simple app that gives you a Windows Explorer view of both PC's hard drives. To copy files, you simply drag and drop between two windows.

The speed was blistering. Each song (about 3MB) copies in 0.2 to 0.4 seconds, and all the files were moved in a shade over five minutes, or just a tad under 1GB per minute. The no-fuss, bam-bam-bam nature of the transfer gave me a total geek buzz. It's a nice comparison to the unexplained pauses and slowdowns that seem inherent to our home wi-fi network, which I'd never even consider for such a gargantuan file transfer (though admittedly we haven't upgraded to 802.11n yet; see Bruce's feature on that new tech).

Anyhow, the Mobile Data Transfer & Synchronisation USB 2.0 Cable model ACC96AU (note to Targus's marketing dept: "iCable" would have been snappier) sells for $99 through Dick Smith and similar outlets. It'll also work for Mac to Mac or Mac to PC transfers, and its built-in software will also handle Outlook email and calendar syncs, or synching any file or folder rather than copying it wholesale. And it'll work with even a relatively ancient PC (a 133MHz Pentium with Windows 2000 being the minimum).

So: not a lot to it. But it's a skill to do simple things well, and something that doesn't happen very often.

Posted by Chris Keall at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

Do iTunes Plus songs from EMI sound better, and good enough to copy to a CD and play on your grown-up stereo? Who the hell can tell. It seems the whole world is trying to upgrade to iTunes Plus, officially released today, and download EMI tracks in the new copyable, 256K audio resolution format (which cost $2.69 vs standard, copyprotected 128K songs). My attempted download keeps seizing up.

The traffic jam is probably being fuelled by the fact you can also upgrade EMI songs in your existing collection for $0.60 per single or $5.40 an album (don't you love the irony that record companies, who are constantly weeping about the impact of new technologies, get to sell you the same song over and over as you upgrade from vinyl to disc to digital format to slightly better digital format, with a few billion in ring tone pocket money thrown in).

Anyhow, EMI albums in the better-sounding format include: Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Joss Stone, Pink Floyd, John Coltrane and more than a dozen of Paul McCartney’s classic albums available on iTunes for the first time.

Posted by Chris Keall at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 1 )