Scifi Channel Opens Tonight

After living in the states for a while one of my loves was the sci-fi channel and I have always missed it here in Australia and tonight the scifi channel starts on Foxtel. I am sure I am going to love this addition to Foxtel.

Iemma promises free WIFI in Sydney CBD

I just read this on builderau.com. that Morris Iemma is “promising” free wifi in the next 3 years. The story says

The NSW state government will in early 2007 go shopping for suppliers to establish “universal coverage” of free Wi-Fi in Sydney’s central business district (including North Sydney), in addition to the suburbs of Parramatta, Penrith and Liverpool and outlying cities Newcastle, Wollongong and Gosford.

This is some great news, for those who are not isps and selling data plans, and will no doubt make the world of mobile devices even better.

Personally I would rather stick hot needles in my eyes then keep the labour party in power in New South Wales but I gotta like this idea. Whether you see this as a promise or an actual truth I guess it will depend but what is true its great to see a politician pushing forward with technology.

Now I just gotta make my device batteries last on wifi while roaming 🙂

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j3 has a Nerd FC player

One of our key employees, Chris Anderson, got the phone call today that he made the Nerds FC Season 2 team. YEAH !!!

I am proud that one of the team has done this and good luck to him, we no doubt will support him all the way.

Windows Embedded: Technical Day (The world of real coders)

If you want to become a real coder instead of one of those people that have Gigs of RAM, tons of CPU and fancy frameworks to hide their flaws then you should attend the Embedded Technical Day is for you. There is nothing better than playing with gadgets and even have the chance to win a Toshiba Gigabeat S60.

 

Windows Embedded Technical SeminarMicrosoft is hosting another Windows Embedded focused technical seminar in Sydney at the Microsoft office on Tuesday, November 28, and then in Auckland on Thursday November 30.Come and hear directly from Microsoft system engineers about what’s new in Windows Embedded CE 6.0 (Microsoft’s hard realtime operating system), the enhancements to Windows XP Embedded in Feature Pack 2007, what can be achieve in retail and hospitality devices with Windows Embedded for Point of Service, and finally the latest updates on the Specialised Server family for Embedded Server devices, such as Windows Storage Server.If you work in the ·         development of Embedded systems·         application development for POS, Kiosks·         or are looking to build devices based on the Windows Embedded family of productsthen this is an event you should attend. 

For more information and to register for the Sydney event: http://www.microsoftembeddedseminars.com/about.aspx?seminarid=28               

Auckland event: http://www.microsoftembeddedseminars.com/about.aspx?seminarid=33

New Copyright Laws = Criminalising Everyday Australians

I was reading this article today on Internet Industry Association website that gives a quick overview of the laws that are currently under a review thats seems to be a little bit of a worry. This bit seems to show some of the gaps in the laws.

 “As an example,” said Mr Coroneos, “a family who holds a birthday picnic in a place of public entertainment (for example, the grounds of a zoo) and sings ‘Happy Birthday’ in a manner that can be heard by others, risks an infringement notice carrying a fine of up to $1320. If they make a video recording of the event, they risk a further fine for the possession of a device for the purpose of making an infringing copy of a song. And if they go home and upload the clip to the internet where it can be accessed by others, they risk a further fine of up to $1320 for illegal distribution. All in all, possible fines of up to $3960 for this series of acts – and the new offences do not require knowledge or improper intent. Just the doing of the acts is enough to ground a legal liability under the new ‘strict liability’ offences.”

The complete article can be read here

Happy 10th Birthday Windows Mobile

On November 1 it was the 10th Annivesary of Windows Mobile, at Comdex November 1996 Windows CE 1.0 came into the world. Now that makes me feel old 🙂 … some piccies of the first device can be found here

SWMUG Meeting Links

Tonight was a great meeting with lots of interesting content … as promised here are all the links for the content I talked about.

• Robotics Studio
• CE6 Training on the 28th November
• barcode.ideas.live.com and readers from Quikmark

Cant wait to see you at the SWMUG christmas party.

Zero Emission Business

Now I am not a tree hugging type of guy so I dont reach for the sandpaper tiolet paper to save a few trees but one thing I have always been taught by mum is “leave it as you found it”. Lots of people jump on this environment bandwagon and I am not 100% convinced that the end is coming as some predicate. All the same I dont see the harm in making sure every business is not making the planet worse.

So when it comes to business and the environment, I believe all businesses should aim at making sure that they fix what they damage. So as a business owner myself I found a little calculator over at carbon neutral to work out how much damage my business is doing with flights and electricity usage.

This website allows you to donate to plant trees to offset the damage, in my case its $69 for 23 trees. What also would be good if you could donate to research to make technology that is less damaging.

I would be interested to hear from others that have followed this step, and what other projects they have seen. I also encourage all other small ISV’s to take up this idea.

Some simple leasons for Microsoft Robotics

After playing with this stuff over the last few months, I have some simple pointers to pass on:

1. Test your comms and interfaces before you build the robot. Its a lot easier to test if the wheels turn or not when it doesnt want to launch of the table.
2. Know where the center of the servo motors are before you put things together.
3. Wheels are easier to configure then tracks, but tracks provide better turning options.
4. Read the documentation well before you launch into things, sometimes with hardware there is no undo.

Windows Mobile Network Analyzer PowerToy

Ever wanted to do a ping from a windows mobile device, I know I have here is an update for the Network Analyzer PowerToy.

The blurb on the box says:

Network Analyzer for Windows Mobile runs network utilities (e.g., ping and ipconfig) on a Windows Mobile powered device. Network Analyzer for Windows Mobile facilitates the troubleshooting of network connectivity issues.

It can be downloaded from here