Defend against the Queensland Government.The photo in this add is a partial of a letter sent to me by the CMC (crime and misconduct commission)  of Queensland Australia. Signed by Helen Couper. Also with this original two supporting letters ,One from dept of communities Clowry Kenel.This document suggests you dismiss someone if he will “fail to dismiss”. The second is from Carol Weeks dept of communities head office stating “these are excepted lies”. I am aiming this to sell to a multi national or large company that is being accused of lieing or misconduct by the Queensland government. Considering the nature of ”A” defence would be only some lies are lies.Who identifies which lie is a lie?.

Take a look here http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220291159979

What I found even funnier was the references to 1994 technology, things like searching Encarta, Looking up on AOL and being disconnected from dial up, not being able to send a 150kb file or 3 floppy disks via email, and the Geocities page being hacked! Even the size of telephones in 1994!  All timeless memories! I love it! 

Now if you read this blog, you’ll know that I’m not a fan of our local radio stations, I love Zinc96 from the Sunshine Coast [ read more here ]

Below are two ads on the radio website - theradio.com.au, and they say the same slogans on air as well, so who are they really apealing to with this campaign? They aren’t promoting themselves very well… 

“Better than a kick in the pants” and “Sick of listening to all your favorite songs? Want to hear two guys talking dribble while you drive home? Then The Benchwarmers is the show for you! Join Ant + Becks for a few hours of your life you’re going to want back.” are not really making me want to listen to any of these shows. Judge for yourself. 

Sydney Aquarium / Wildlife World
I hadn’t been to the aquarium in many years, and they have recently built next door “Wildlife world”. Both of which are situated at the end of Cockle Bay Wharf on Darling Harbour.

Apple Store Sydney
This was something I was interested in seeing. I have only been to Apple outlets in Australia, that are resellers, like Myers and David Jones. I have been to the Mac Store in Hawaii, which was only a condensed one, so the Sydney one was the first full sized one I had been to. In true Apple style, it was all glass, all shiny, all pretty and just gave off good vibes.

The Lindt Chocolate Store
This is not for those who are calorie counters! After having a simple afternoon tea, you get sick of saying the word chocolate. Everything is Chocolate! For example, I had a “Milk Chocolate Hot Chocolate and A Waffle with Lindt White Chocolate Icecream and Melted Milk Chocolate over the top” Let alone 4 people ordering simmilar things. It is really nice, and it puts you off chocolate or anything sweet for about a week! All you want is salty food! However Lindt do make some of the best chocolate!

See all my photos from Sydney Here

The story basically read, that the author went on YouTube looking for the video on the guy from Finland who put clips of him shooting things and what not (Although on the news they said they have now been taken off) but never she decided to look for it…

All around the world people were asking how someone could get away with posting a video of themselves on such a public site, in which they clearly state they intend to kill people.

Based on this article, the author really has no clue on how services such as YouTube work. They were horrified and said something along the lines of “If you saw the things on YouTube I did, it would scare you for life”. 

Now, YouTube is like any other user oriented website, and that the content of the site is controlled by the users, not the owners of the site. The Author of the article suggested that YouTube condemn adult or inappropriate material. They suggested that YouTube should filter the content… if they had done some research, they would have learnt that every MINUTE there are over 17 HOURS of video uploaded to YouTube. You do the math on how much content there is in a day to manually filter and moderate.

YouTube has services that other users flag video as inappropriate in an effort to keep that sort of content off their site. However, the other point that annoyed me, was they quoted that they typed “Porn” into the search and got 250,000 results… if they had used YouTube quite a lot before, they would know that people who want people to watch their video, they will fill the title, description and tags with all pornographic titles and other terms that people are likely to search for.

Overall, it really annoys me that authors can release these sorts of stories, with no knowledge of what they are talking about, and that so many other people will read that, and make an opinion based on this terrible story!

Thursday @ WDS08 

The Day started off with an opening Keynote from Lynne d Johnson; “New media - new business”

Lynne will set the tone of the conference this year with insights into the future of media drawn from her wealth of experience in business, media and online communities as Senior Editor at Fast Company.

Lynne D Johnson @ WDS08

This was one of the most interesting and thought provoking keynotes I’ve listened too that I can remember. Lynne addressed the direction of media, and discussed how mediums like print are on the way out at a fast pace, and being replaced by the web. One remark I heard which I loved was along the lines of, “I was looking at a forklift loading up a truck of 50,000 newspapers, and thought to myself, that is the most expensive 50,000 pages hits to a web site I’ve ever seen”. Will print media die? No. It will always have a place, but as Lynne said, it will most likely become a more niche market, and as I always propose, that the minimal print objects are merely a means for people to visit a website.

iPhone Development Session

Later on in the day I listened to Tim Lucas and Pete Ottery and developing for the iPhone. This was a really interesting and cool session from a CSS/XHTML point of view, and they showed just a handful of cool CSS features you can deploy with the iPhone version of Safari (Some CSS3) - and they also demonstrated some usability woes the steer clear of when developing for the iPhone, which I have taken some notes on. Tim and Pete have developed a number of iPhone sites, including the iphone.news.com.au website, and the mobile version for the WebJam website.

Javascript Session @ WDS08

After lunch it was time for the much anticipated Javascript Libraries super session for 3.5 hours with Craig Sharkie, Cameron Adams, Ben Askins, Jason Crane and Earle Castledine. This session the discussion was panel based, discussing the pro’s, con’s of jQuery, YUI, Scriptaculous and Javascript from hand. It was a really really interesting discussion, and for me who doesn’t do an awful lot of Javascript programming, but interested in learning more, it was really good to see the pro’s and con’s from a number of developers and have given me a head start on learning some more Javascript.

August and his Keynote

The last session for Thursday was by August de los Reyes who is a legend in so many eyes. August went into an area of IT and Application development that really interests me; and what’s behind complex application interface design. He went into many historic notable designers and lots of research that helps us as designers understand where we have come from, so we can more efficiently go into the future. August works at Microsoft on the Surface technologies. Some other things that interested me was the discussion on weather emotions are merely a label for our subconscious of events we have witnessed. Do we have the Event > The Emotion > Then the response OR is it the Event (Seeing a snake in your kitchen) then a Response (Tightening up and a pulse etc) then the emotion of fear etc, to label that event. It sounds really complex for a website designer to need to know about, but with application development it’s good to know these things so we can better improve the experience of the user. 

Using the Microsoft Surface PC - no mouse or keyboard required.

Once again, we looked back in history to see where have come from, so we can easiler see where we are going and how we can get there. One of the main themes were the TUI - GUI - NUI. Which stands for the Text user interface, like original computers, Graphic user interface, which is what we have now on normal Computers, and the next step which is NUI - Natural user interface, which is being used in the new Microsoft Surface PC, that I was fortunate enough to use!

Friday @ WDS08

Friday morning we started with Jeff Veen - and the session called “Designing our way through data”. This session was really interesting, and for a third time we looked back into history to see how some of the most influential people have tackled data design and how we can learn from that. Jeff was one of the leaders at the Google analytics program which is a system for website owners to parse the data of traffic on their website and see it’s statistics.  There was tonnes to learn here again, and it was really interesting to see scientists / designers in the 1800’s who developed ways of visualising data in a way that it is easy to understand. A notable quote that came out of this talk, was that any form of design is a form of a story, and that everything that is over telling the story should be taken out, and that you can  be then be guilty of “Decorating the Design”. 

Veen also talked about some interesting points which carried on from August’s talk, on “Consume Media” like newspapers, TV etc and “Participate Media” - starting off with things like Pong, and computers. Another interesting point was that why print designers find it so hard to design for web. The Web you loose control of the media, and that is something hard for most print designers to accept. Rather than designing a 10×10 advertisement and using fixed CMYK colour codes, the web you have no control how wide, how high, what the screen renders the colour as - and it can be very challenging for designers to overcome and truly understand.

Later during the day I listened to the “Choosing the right framework” session - however I found this one to be a bit low energy, and not exactly what I was interested in, as it covered Ruby on Rails and Python, and Joomla, all of which I’m not really interested in. Joomla was interesting, and I learned that it is actually Australian based.

The rest of the day, I listened to Myles Eftos talking about OpenID and OAuth, which was interested, but as discussed at the end of the session, it does really have it’s flaws about it.

Overall it was a tremendous conference and I will definitely be wanting to attend next year.

I’ve been a Telstra customer since I got my first CDMA prepaid mobile phone probably 9 or 10 years ago. To be honest, I really didn’t have any problems with my Telstra phone. I had reception anywhere and everywhere I needed it, and if I prepaid $30 here or there, it would last me the month.

When I started running a business and relying on it more and more I used a “cap” which I think are a great idea. I started on the $49/month cap, which included $250 worth of calls plus $100 telstra credit, so basically $350 credit of calls, but I started using that up as work got even more intense.

About a year ago I upgraded to the $79 cap, which included about $550 worth of calls, and if you’re a reader of this blog, you’ll know I purchased an unlocked iPhone about a year ago. When Apple released iPhone firmware 2.0.1, I had the ability to receive email and surf the internet, even if it was at dial up speeds. For only an extra $10 a month for 150mb data.

There was no real reason for me to upgrade to a 3G iPhone, however I knew Telstra’s plans are INSANELY dear, and with Optus, I can now pay $10 a month LESS, receive the same amount of call caps, 7x the amount of data (700mb) and unlimited SMS’s to any mobile phone.

As far as statistics go, Dr Nelson has had some of the worst around, with the lowest approval ratings in something like 17 years, and he hadn’t won over anyone in the 9 months with his approval ratings barely fluctuating. 

Although I don’t know a lot about Malcolm Turnbull’s past or history, the brief reading I did on Wikipedia  he is well educated and has great experience in business, being referred to the richest politician in Australia. Further to his education and past experience, the way he speaks and presents himself - he appears to be something that the liberal party will do well having as the leader.

I jumped on the Tilt Train and caught a ride down to Brisbane. I didn’t really feel like driving down to Brisbane and getting through the city, and the Tilt Train was the best option. The trip was really good, compared to driving, it was about 20 minutes longer, however, I was able to use my laptop, respond to emails on my iPhone and what not. Even at 50% capacity for 4 hours, I got a lot more done that 3.5 hours at 0% capacity. The ticket cost be about $50, and compared to 2 tanks of petrol, the train was really the way to go! 

Once in Brisbane, we attended a pre-award-night function on the Thursday night, told on hints and tips, and if you win, what to do. On the Friday night, it was time to get dressed up and head to the Sofitel Hotel, where the Telstra Business awards were. 

It was really a flash show, the entertainment, the decorations, the running and overall production of the event was incredible. Things I really noticed was the flawless AV displays on the dual screens, the use of video cameras whilst speakers were on stage, and lighting and smoke. From someone who has a history is who production and event management, I really appreciated the professionalism on the night. 

After the business awards, it was off to the Brisbane Casino, which has a good atmosphere when at a licensed venue at 1am. Some people  may complain about too much security and CCTV cameras, but when you know there are guards everywhere and cameras everywhere, you really do feel safe. 

While in Brisbane it was time for a bit of a break, and unwind. One thing I’ve noticed, and always said about Brisbane, is that there is just nothing to do. 

Once you’ve walked through Queen St Mall, inhaled the cigarette smoke, and looked at the shops, then that’s about Brisbane. You could walk over and look at the dirty old brown river at South Bank, but really, why bother when you come from a nice place like Hervey Bay. When contrasting Hervey Bay, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and Gold Coast, really I’d rather go anywhere than Brisbane, it’s such a boring town!

See more photos on my Gallery page, here