Today Nokia have announced details about the new Nokia N97. This is to become Nokia’s top spec’ed phone although they are not calling it a phone.

“…the world’s most advanced mobile computer, which will transform the way people connect to the Internet and to each other.”

Nokia Press Release

I first thought that was a pretty wild claim given the fierce competition and you never know what the next big thing will be. While I am impressed with some of the specs of this phone, I am still reserved in my judgement, just because it is a big claim.

That said the specifications are impressive here are a few:

• 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 pixel (that’s 16:9)
• Touch screen
• An “always” open “Homepage”
• A-GPS
• Electronic Compass
• QWERTY Keyboard
• 32 Gig Onboard Memory
• Micro SD Slot - supports up to 64 Gig of memory
• 5 Megapixel Camera with Carl Zeiss optics
• DVD Quality Capture
• Continuous playback of audio for 1.5 days and about 4 -5 hours for video
• WiFi

That is about all they are saying right now. There is a video floating about and it should be at the bottom of this post if I can manage to wrangle the new widescreen format from YouTube, spose that will work perfectly on the N97…

I just can not help but notice that Nokia are using screen rotation in a similar manner to the iPhone and a few other things. Not sure where the ideas came from but it is clear this is a logical direction for small mobile appliances to go.

There is also a strong emphasis in the press release on social networking and a hint at geolocation features. The other thing I noticed was the RSS feed on the “Homepage”, nice touch. I like the idea of the Homepage and having actual content displayed on it. This is something relatively new. Maybe in the future we can use an actual service like Netvibes or Pageflakes?

One thing I don’t like the look of is the flip top keyboard, just a bad feeling about it. Looks like it will be the first thing to break and a pain in the butt to use.

Be great to hear from the phone buffs out there as to what they think about the new Nokia N97 top dog.

Travis is a long term listener of the show and generally a top bloke. Always has an encouraging word and very supportive of the show.

Travis works in remote parts of Australia for a mining company. As you might appreciate the Internet coverage is a bit patchy out there. So Travis has a solution: Download as many podcasts as possible onto the iPod to last the time away, come home and refuel the iPod ready for the next trip. It must take a while for the downloads is all I can say.

Travis you are a top Aussie mate and your geek creed is safe and sound, even without an Internet connection in the middle of nowhere. Being such a typical Aussie geek thought that I would share this photo that he sent to us. Thanks Travis!

If you have a great photo like Travis then feel free to send it in!

Image from Stuti ~'s Flickr photostream

You’ve probably seen the news on TV about the attacks in Mumbai.

Social Media tags are keeping Mumbai information moving, across countries, cities. platforms, timezones.

If you don’t have Twitter, you may not be aware of the live updates coming from the #mumbai Twitter tag.
There’s also photos on Flickr on the #mumbai Flickr tag.

What can you do?

Please do not publish or re-publish any information which can help the attackers. No room numbers, troop movements, details on where people are hiding, nationalities and general situation intelligence. Keep talking, but be careful.

If you’re in Mumbai:

Give Blood
Three hospitals need blood; JJ Hospital, St George Hospital and Bombay Hospital (map on Google Maps). Contact numbers are 022-23739400 for JJ Hospital, 022?22620344 for St George Hospital and Bombay Hospital is 22067676 on extension 216.

Keep watch for the stolen Jeeps
Hijacked police Jeep license numbers are MH01 ZA102 and MH01 BA51791. Do not approach yourself. Call police on 100 24937755.

If you’re concerned about loved ones from foreign nations:

Australia
Australians can call 1300 555 135.

Brazil
Brazilians can call 9820686143.

Canada
Canadians looking for info on relatives in Mumbai can call Foreign Affairs on 1-613-996-8885 from Canada and 1-800-387-3124 elsewhere.

United Kingdom
Brits can call 00442070080000.

United States
Americans can call 888-407-4747.

Glad that you could make it to the Aussie Geek Podcast episode 10. A very laid back show, it was a heap of fun and we had some issues with Gdocs… well, OK it was me that had the issues but I am still not convinced that Keith and Cait did not have something to do with it.

Please send us your feedback either via email or by leaving your comment right here. Or click the MyChingo link to leave us an audio comment that we can include in the show!

Subscribe to this Podcast for Free via iTunes and RSS

Don’t foget to also take a look at the Aussie Geek Podcast Forum!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Firefox Milestone
• Gmail Updates
• Bionic Eye for Artist, watch your slots
• ISP iiNet Sued
• Desktop IM is Dead
• Apple’s New Hardware DRM
• iPhone Hit #1
• Online Ad Growth Borks
• Intel Launches the i7
• iPhone “Glitch”
• ISS has a “wee” Problem

The Break

Firefox Extension

• Flash Game Maximizer

A Word from the Wise

Sites and Services

• Write or Die: Self sabotage at it’s best
• Stack Overflow: Get your coding questions answered
• EtherPad: Collaborative notepad, so good they had to go private
• Let Me Google That For You: For answering those stoopid questions
• Newsified: Your favorite bookmarking service as a newspaper
• The Casual Collective: Awesome collection of flash games done right
• Bestcovery: Answers the question: “What is the best…”

Feedback

Farewell

Featured Music

David Singer
“The Cost Of Living” (mp3)
from “Cost Of Living”
(Deep Elm)

Buy at Deep Elm Records
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album

Hope all the AGP crew is doing well. The weather is crap here in Northern New South Wales with very strong and cold westerly winds beating down on us. Great day for chilling out inside and watching telly or a movie or what about YouTube Live?

YouTube did not advertise the event but YouTube is running a live event right now. I just caught the Myth Busters, very cool. Jamie got shot with their paintball cannon that mimics the rendering of graphics on computers.

I was not sure how the whole YouTube event would come off, I have not seen much but I am surprised, pleasantly. I actually thought that the event would get bombarded and it would be near impossible to see it. To that end it was quick to connect and get the stream going and they are offering 3 quality settings! Then we are talking about Google if any could provide the bandwidth required they could. Plus they have thrown in 3 camera angles to choose from. Try that on mainstream TV.

Quality? Great! Totally watchable in low quality and a pleasure at high quality with zero jitter and smooth TV quality viewing. Having said that, it will depend on your connection. I am on an 8MB line.

While I am not sure that the content is everyone’s cup of tea the whole thing is pretty cool. The event has featured artists and popular personalities with a heavy leaning on music. There is also a few awards and such highlighting key YouTube personalities. I appreciate that this is going to be a big draw card as far as the demographic but personally I would have liked to see more of a balance. It is pretty much a big show, for entertainment’s sake, which is not bad either.

In addition I can not help but thing this is Internet media shouting out loud and clear that we can do it just like CNN, Fox and all the rest and our audience is massive and our reach is longer. All very, very true. I wonder just how much main stream coverage this event will get. To that end there are over 14,199,650 for the channel, not sure if this includes the live hits for the current event.

I love the concept and I sincerely hope that the spin off and the momentum is maintained. I also hope that we see more of this and mainstream media gets a big kick up the arse.

Is this the start of the revolution?

Recently we’ve upated the forum rules on the AGP Forums and as such while writing up the Forum User Agreement and the Code of Conduct I stumbled across what I consider one of the best informatic online videos that I have ever seen.

How to behave on a forum!

So watch this video and if you are a member of the forums also have a read of the: Forum User Agreement and Code of Conduct

All brought to you by VideoJug.com

Be quick this one is not going to last. If you are wanting a pretty good software firewall you could do worse than ZoneAlarm. But it usually costs, however not today!

ZoneAlarm is having a birthday and they are giving away their popular firewall. This includes a 12 month subscription for ZoneAlarm Pro. They are also offering 50% off all their other firewall products, which is not bad either. I can not think of a better way to see if you like something than to try it, full version, for free.

I have used ZoneAlarm on one of my machines for a while. Initially it was to trouble shoot a problem we thought might have been the firewall… long story, but it is pretty good and comes out of the box secure and easy to use. If however you want to make some changes, that is dead simple as well. Best of both worlds there. They also recently updated the version and it is looking slick and very functional. Easy to navigate as well, which can be an issue with more complex firewalls (as far as set-up). Overall a very capable software firewall. Give it a try, the price is right.

Just in case you are wondering, this is the latest version and not some dodgy offer where they offer you the version from 2004. I hate offers like that, this one is legit and worth letting people know about.

Offer Ends 19th of November 2008 at 0600hrs PST

Look Here if you need to know what time that is

Happy Birthday ZoneAlarm!

Just been in the process of updating my podcasts and finally sync’ing my iPod at long last and noticed that good friend of the Aussie Geek Podcast, James Williams has updated his show. To my surprise James has edited an interview he did with me a while back and created a 2 part Interview. He released the first part today.

James sums up the first part better than I could:

“We speak to Dave about his decision to deconsolidate from the network and become independent. We also discuss and examine the challenges of moving and setting yourself up as an independent podcaster after being connected with a network.”

I would encourage everyone to jump over to the Podcasters’ Emporium and support James. Please drop him a comment and even better subscribe to the show. Not a weekly gig for James usually as he is busy runnnig his network and producing many podcasts and not his own! Regardless I look forward to every episode, at the top of my list when one comes out. James is an accomplished producer and puts out a very polished podcast.

I’ll let you in on a little secret as well, stay on the lookout for some collaborative work that James and I are working on. That’s all I am going to say, I might get in trouble for saying that.

Thanks James it was a pleasure shooting the breeze. Thanks for the kind words.

Hey there fellow geeks. The name is Jeff and I’m here primarily to showcase cool data visualizations or infographics that I come across while traversing the web. The first data visualization site I’d like to showcase is called ShowWorld. ShowWorld takes an interesting approach at presenting data by taking a map of the world and letting the size of each country represent the data set for a particular subject.

The top menu lists People, Planet, Business, Politics, Living, and Your Maps. Moving the mouse cursor over any of these parent menu items will open a dropdown box with particular items that have been added into the system. For example, if you were to select PLANET - ANIMAL RESOURCES - PIGS, you should see an animation of the countries changing their size based on the amount of pigs the country has. In this example, China takes the number 1 spot with 501.5 million pigs or, 50.7% of the world’s pig population. That is a lot of bacon!

ShowWorld also has an area for YourMaps which are data sets that have been suggested and submitted by users that are then approved by the ShowWorld staff. If you have an excel file containing a dataset, send it in to ShowWorld with a summary of 60 words. If the entry is selected, it will be published under the YourMaps heading.

Just playing around with the site, I was easily able to see which countries were number 1 or in last place for a particular data set. The animation is powered by Flash so it should be available to play around with for the majority of browsers. Give it a spin and let me know what you learn.

It is time for a special! This week we interview Chris, one of the members of Lizards from Afar who’s music we have been featuring on the show for the past 2 weeks.

We don’t normally feature bands but this one is different, the way that they create, publish and market their music is unique and I think you’ll all appreciate the journey.

Chris also bought with him 2 tracks for us to play on the show, We liked them and I think you will too.

Please support the band and drop over to both their Blog and Music site and say hello, download some tracks and let them know what you think. Links are at in the show notes!

Please send us your feedback either via email or by leaving your comment right here. Or click the MyChingo link to leave us an audio comment that we can include in the show!

Subscribe to this Podcast for Free via iTunes and RSS

Don’t foget to also take a look at the Aussie Geek Podcast Forum!

Show Notes

Welcome

Interview: Part One

Music Track: Clipboard

Promo: Life in General

Interview: Part Two

Feedback

Farewell

Music Track: Just a Girl

Check out the Lizards from Afar:

• Get their Music from ReverbNation
• We are the Lizards from Afar Website
• Lizrads on MySpace

Hope you Enjoyed this Special Edition of the Aussie Geek Podcast, I would thank Lizards from Afar for their support and to Chris for allowing us to interview him for the show. Best of luck Lizards and don’t be strangers!

Yes Knightwsie can be serious every now and then. Today he has posted a great video to the AGP Forum and I thought it was worth putting here.

Knightwise is not an Apple fanboy, in fact he uses just about every OS that he can lay his hands on. Mainly though his regular list consists of is MacOS, Windows and Linux. But then he is faced with a problem, you have 3 operating systems, one laptop and a small desk. Knightwise has found his solution and it is pretty sweet.

What Knightwise has set up is:

• 1 24″ iMac
• 1 Macbook Pro
• 1 VM with Ubuntu
• 1 VM with Windows
• 2 Mirai 19″ LCD’s mounted on Neoflex Arms
• 2 External Harddrives in Icybox Enclosures
• 1 Keyboard
• 1 Mouse

KW uses some smart thinking, nice hardware and some inventive software to accomplish his geek space. Check out the video that explains how he does it and why.

Please be aware that the Aussie Geek Podcast is not affiliated with The Podcast Network. We are now supporting ourselves independently and funding our own operations here at AGP HQ. Our podcast is free to listen to and always will be.

As such we no longer manage the blog, the feed or the podcast called the Global Geek Podcast. Although we retain rights to the name “Global Geek Podcast” the control of the associated blog and feed is now with The Podcast Network.

The reason for this notice is that those people that are still subscribed to the Global Geek Podcast feed and email have received a post and email yesterday/today asking for money in support of the “Global Geek Podcast”. This was not sent or asked for by us. It was requested by The Podcast Network. Doing so would be supporting The Podcast Network and not the “Aussie Geek Podcast”.

Please unsubscribe to the email and feed for the Global Geek Podcast if you thought subscribing was in support of a blog and podcast that we had control over as this is not the case.

For those that don’t have a clue what this is all about: The Global Geek Podcast was the original name of this show and as such was a part of The Podcast Network. 90 Episodes were produced by us under that name. Earlier this year we decided to leave the network for various reasons. We started this site with a different name but the same format and hosts and not a part of TPN.

My appologies to any listener of this show that received an email thinking it was from us. Although I have no control over it I am sorry that it may have confused you. If however you wish to support The Podcast Network financially then please do so but please don’t make the assumption that you are supporting The Aussie Geek Podcast or it’s hosts.

The Crew at the Aussie Geek Podcast do not require any financial support at all and we will continue to offer our shows and content for free.

Subscribe the Aussie Geek Podcast Here

Subscribe to the Aussie Geek Podcast via Email Here

The Team at the Aussie Geek Podcast including:

• Dave (Host)
• Cait (Host)
• Keith (Host)
• Knightwise (Contributor)
• Tim (Blog Contributor and Design)
• and now Jeff (Blog Contributor)

WakingGiant.org has organised an official and legal written petition against the internet filtering proposal and trial scheduled to begin in December 2008, this trial begins on the 24th of December 2008.

What does it say?

TO THE HONOURABLE SPEAKER AND MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

We, the undersigned citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the House “The mandatory Internet filtering initiative” and hereby express our condemnation of the forthcoming legislation to implement mandatory filtering of web pages by ISP’s in Australia.

We believe:

- That having all Australians’ internet access subjected to a secret and unaccountable government blacklist is completely unacceptable.

- That Australia already has laws in place preventing the possession or viewing of child pornography, and other materials found objectionable by the vast majority of Australian’s. Filtering objectionable web pages will not stop those wishing to view such materials from obtaining them and will slow down the internet.

- That there are numerous effective, low cost, commercially available software packages that give parents the power to filter the internet web pages that their children can view. Imposing mandatory, blanket internet filtering upon the public is objectionable to the majority of Australian’s.

- That the highly vocal, religious minority that supports mandatory filtering of web pages are not representative of mainstream Australia. Australia has a long and proud history of secularism, whereby the state remains free of religious interference.

In addition we condemn all efforts by governments and telecommunication firms that attempt to implement restrictions of the free exchange of speech.

Your petitioners respectfully call upon the House to take legislative action to keeping the internet unfiltered. We do not support the introduction of mandatory filtering of content by ISP’s nor to the $44.2 million dollars it will cost Australian’s and we uphold our fundamental human right to the free expression of ideas and opinions.

Why should I sign it?

• 20,000 signatures from churches are the reason this “clean feed” filter is being implemented.
• More than 20,000 signatures from the rest of the population will show that this is not supported by the public.
• Watch the video, watch as many videos as you can on the subject.
• Do some research, do you really know what they’re trying to do?
• The number one reason to oppose this? Sending illegal material via email will circumvent this filter.
• People who opt-out of filtering will be on a list, some filtering cannot be opted out of.
• The list of blocked sites will be secret and unavailable to the Australian public.
• Public opposition to Government opinion is already being actively suppressed. Mark Newton is currently unfltered, so read him while you can.
• This filter will not protect anyone and is built on Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD).
• There is an implication by the Orwellian name of the original petition, that people without the filter, are receiving a “dirty” internet.
• Alarming Scope Creep in the Clean Feed Project
• A 16 year old cracked the first government filter easily, this is what he has to say about the filter plan.
• Amnesty International says internet censorship affects everyone.
• This is a waste of 44.2 million tax payer dollars that could be better spent elsewhere.
• Censorware has in the past blocked people from accessing sites on botany, feminism, youth suicide prevention, rape and child molestation survivor support, family planning, prison rape activism, AIDS information, disability rights, gay rights, religion (including a Jewish youth site and the Vatican), political dissent, euthanasia, drug harm minimisation, human rights, major mainstream media sites such as TIME magazine and politics (including the British Conservative Party site).
• News like the pictures from Abu Ghraib could be blocked, news should never be filtered.

How do I sign it?

• Print the petition:

either with room for six signatures (PDF)


or room for more (PDF)


• sign it yourself and pass it around
• mail it in

What else can I do?

• Write to your local MP (don’t email)
• Organise a dinner with your family and friends, let them know that you are signing the petition and why. Take a petition with you if they want to sign it too.
• Email this to your family and friends in Australia, so they can have their say too.
• Post your own video on YouTube.
• Post on your blog.

NOTE: Only Australian Citizens can sign this official hardcopy Petition.

I had a great time editing the show this week. Recording the first show in the new office with my usual audio-up was awesome. What was even better was getting my own back.

For those that turn off at the start of the song, bad move. If you did not know we have a weekly bloopers segment. A tradition started by Keith and one that I am happy to continue, with pleasure…

Please send us your feedback either via email or by leaving your comment right here. Or click the MyChingo link to leave us an audio comment that we can include in the show!

Subscribe to this Podcast for Free via iTunes and RSS

Don’t foget to also take a look at the Aussie Geek Podcast Forum!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Windows 7 slated for 2009
• Is that a Projector in your Pocket?
• WPA Busted (sort of)
• Street View Easter Egg
• Elections and Politics
• The Great Firewall of Oz
• Firefox Market Share
• Yahoo! Live is Dead
• Flickr Milestone
• iPhone Lock as Good as a plastic Bag

The Break

Applications

• Noteable: Software notebook replacement for those bits of paper
• Gmail Back Up: Does what it says but with a handy trick up it’s sleeve
• LastSharp: Download streaming music from Last.FM
• iSquint: Video conversion app for OS X — Convert videos to smaller, more compatible sizes

Firefox Extensions

• Juice: Highlight terms on a page and have this powerful sidebar app trawl for content from all over the web. Add videos to play later or images to save for reference. Do searches, discover deep links within content.
• The China Channel: Mimics what it is like to surf the net in China

Geek Project

• Thumbtacks and maybe magnets from keyboards

Sites and Services

• Tabbloid: Wrap up your favourite feeds into a PDF for printing and reading
• Dynamic Periodic Table: Hard to describe but awesome (our pick)

Feedback

Farewell

• Follow us on twitter
• Leave us some feedback
• Review us in iTunes
• Join the Forum

Featured Music

We are featuring a band for the next few weeks called Lizards from Afar. The first track we have form them is called Giant Robot. We thank “Sir Pent” for an into and an bit about the inspiration for the track. We would also thank the Lizards for their contribution to the show!

How could we say no to a band of self described Geek musicians!

Check out the Lizards from Afar:

• Get their Music from ReverbNation
• We are the Lizards from Afar Website
• Lizrads on MySpace

I want one.

Although the biggest question that I have is: Does it toast evenly on both sides? It beats me how we can fly to space but we are yet to make a toaster that is reliable.

You can pre-order yours right now ready for the New Year. Pitty that it won’t be released before Christmas.

These days the average PC is pretty powerful and capable of amazing things. But with great power comes great responsibility (sorry had to use that…). What I am getting at is the fact that for a while now the average PC is a lot more powerful than most users will ever utilize. Sure us geeks are always upgrading and speeding up our machines, often because we can. But I am not sure that we actually need to.

To that end the average computer these days is comparable to what would have once been considered a “super computer” and can do things in a very short space of time. That includes cracking passwords.

With that in mind it also means that what you once considered quite a strong password now is anything but. The reason being, that the super computer that your reading this post with is quite capable of cracking a 9 character randomly generated password of upper and lower case letters and numbers in less time than it took you to listen to the latest AGP.

It gets better (or worse depending if you use your dogs name for a password at every service your signed up to). Consider this:

“Your password is 9 characters long and has 308,915,776,000 combinations.
It takes 1.12 hours or 0.05 days to crack your password on computer that tries 137,438,953,472 passwords per hour. This is based on a typical PC processor in 2008 and that the processor is under 10% load.”

So right now I have 59 processes running on my PC and I have between 1 and 5% CPU usage happening. This computer, even with numerous applications running and working could very easily crack that password and your dogs name in a heartbeat.

So what is the answer? 2 characters. That’s right the addition of 2 special characters. Adding just one takes that processing time up to about 35 hours. That is long enough hat someone might still be willing to put the time in. Add 2 and you take it up to 1,150 hours, which is over a month. They might want to play WoW before that so you might be in luck.

Get a bit more serious about making your passwords stronger by adding in 2 random alpha numeric characters and you give yourself 423,686.55 days. Which is over a thousand years. That’s better right? Now change that password every few days and you might even keep most people busy. But I won’t be doing that, I am not quite that paranoid.

I am no security expert but after the discovery that the passwords I thought were pretty good for average use (as opposed to banking or data security, which should be stronger) are actually crap I looked at ways to make them better. Just a wake up call that the average PC is quite capable of ruining your day and your bank account. Perhaps the dogs name might not be such a great idea.

As you guys know I use RoboForm to manage my passwords so having more complex ones is not a problem. I am going to change my password generator to include those special characters. Sure it is not perfect but feels a lot better knowing that the average high school kid might not bother with it once they find out that they will be dead by the time they crack it. I don’t care about the government, if they want in they get it and they probably don’t even need the password.

In writing this post I used a cool web based tool called Hackosis: Brute Force Calculator which can test how long it would take to brute force a password given the number and types of characters that the password is made up of. Go and check out your passwords and see how they measure up in this day and age.

Source: PHP: Brute Force Calculator v1.1

Hackers: Please don’t hack the web site again, this is not an invitation. Plus we changed the passwords for everything to something the length of War and Peace with alphas… just a small request. Thanks

OK so it is not so much a geek story, but I was so blown away at this video that I just had to share it.

This video is amazing and not in the way that you are probably thinking. But I am pretty sure the pilot will be laundering the flight suit.

I could ramble on but it won’t do this justice, just watch…

Video Source

There are claims that the video is fake. I don’t have a clue, but going on the scream of panic I would say it just might be real. Any aviation buffs out there have an opinion? I am hoping that my brother takes a look, he is a pilot and has flown for years and I am sure might be able to help us out.

If it is fake, it is a pretty good one.

Don't Vote, Don't Complain

For those not familiar with Elections in the United States, it’s not compulsory in America to vote. However it’s a responsibility to society for any citizen in a democracy to vote.

On November 4th (a work day! no wonder Americans don’t vote, who organised this?), make some time to vote, pick up your friends and neighbours on the way, or call them and remind them to vote too. Polling hours for your state can be found here. It’s your vote and every vote counts, it’s not 1965 any more.

Why is the AGP posting about this? Because we care. In Australia, voter turnout is about 95%, so our leaders are elected by majority. In America the percentage is much lower, 56% and under. Which means that the votes of those who didn’t vote, could turn the tide of any election and change the course of history. Which means that the people running your country, may not be representing you as citizens. Some people in this world die for even a chance to vote, don’t waste yours. We don’t care who you vote for, we just want you to vote.

If you, the People of the United States, want a perfect Union, Justice, domestic Tranquility, common defence, general Welfare, Liberty and Posterity, go and vote for who you think can make it happen!

PS. If you forgot to register, it’s too late for the 2008 Election, but don’t let the next one roll around in the same situation, register today. Speak to the Federal Electorial Commission if you’re not sure about anything.

Keith and I managed to find some of that stuff that seems to be in short supply the last few weeks, time… and we decided to record the show with it. But that is a good thing, we love doing the show!

Enjoy this weeks show and take advantage of the addition of the player to the sidebar, thanks to Tim.

Please send us your feedback either via email or by leaving your comment right here. Or click the MyChingo link to leave us an audio comment that we can include in the show!

Subscribe to this Podcast for Free via iTunes and RSS

Don’t foget to also take a look at the Aussie Geek Podcast Forum!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Real World Punishment for a Virtual Crime
• Google Analytics Upgrades
• Canned Responses in Gmail
• Walmart Reinvents Itself (See Dave’s original story on Walmart)
• Steve Jobs Prints Money
• Yahoo! Dives
• The Tech Slump
• SONY’s New PS3 ToS
• Microsoft to Filter the AGP
• Stop Press: Deep Linking comes to YouTube

The Break

Applications

• Moderator: Moderate WordPress comments from the desktop with AIR
• twitroid: twitter client for android phones
• High Dynamic Range Image Creator: Open source HDR image creator
• Wiimote Whiteboard: Now for Mac and LINUX, Johnny Lee’s original projects

Firefox Extension

• Tree Style Tabs: Move your tabs around Firefox and arranged in some logical format

A Word From the Wise

Sites and Services

• lala: Move your music to the cloud, pity about the geo-location restrictions
• pective: real life sizes of objects scaled to your display (Also mentioned sizeasy)
• 5 Minute Mystery: Paid service. a mystery a day for a year right to your inbox
• The Eyeballing Game: Harder than you think, another “on-hold” diversion

Feedback

Farewell

• Leave a comment on the blog
• Follow us on twitter
• Join the Forum

Featured Music

We are featuring a band for the next few weeks called Lizards from Afar. The first track we have form them is called 4H and Fourteen. We thank “Gator” for an into and an bit about the inspiration for the track. We would also thank the Lizards for their contribution to the show!

How could we say no to a band of self described Geek musicians!

Check out the Lizards from Afar:

• Get their Music from ReverbNation
• We are the Lizards from Afar Website
• Lizrads on MySpace

I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a product review site on a domain that I own and doing the odd paid product review.  It’s not the sort of thing that I’ve wanted to do on my main site at kdmurray.net, but in it’s own environment something I wouldn’t mind trying out.

The catch? You can’t make money if you ain’t got PageRank.

Many paid blogging services will only pay out if the PageRank is above a certain level.  So I’ve decided to try out some SEO tactics, and see if I can get the PageRank on the site from 0 to 1 in only one week.  It’s a daunting task, and luck will play into it as much as anything because PageRank requires Google to actually crawl your site, and any sites linking to it for those to be factored in.

So I’ve used a few of the SEO tricks I know to try to get the site to rank:

• With WordPress installed, set up a good SEO support plugin, in this case the All-In-One SEO Pack
• Use H1 tags which match your page titles
• When linking to the site, even from within your own site, use the page title in the link text
• For blogs, tag your posts
• Get higher Page-Ranking sites to link to yours

These basic rules will give you the basics for getting your site noticed.  If you follow these steps, and get lots of quality content into the site, Google and others will in fact notice.  You can do other things like promoting your site by linking to it in email signatures, forum signatures (particularly crawlable ones!) and other places where it could get noticed like your Twitter profile.

As for the experiment, we’re getting close to the end of the one-week period and so far, still nothing.  Most of what I’ve read suggests that it can take upwards of a month for the site to rank.  I did write up a post explaining the experiment on the blog.  I’ll have to decide in the next couple of days whether to renew the domain (it expires in a few days) and continue the experiment, or abandon the whole thing and be done with it.  If nothing else, hopefully it’s led to some useful tips for our valued AGP listeners.

If you’ve got any SEO tips that have worked for you in the past, share them in the comments!

The iPhone is everywhere, and as such, so is the AGP on little screens hovering about all over the world with people listening to the podcast they downloaded.

So to make it a little easier (make that a hell of a lot easier) to navigate the AGP on the iPhone I’ve thrown together a couple of updates to the site that allows iPhone-native Safari rendering so now you can catch up with what the AGP is doing on the iPhone without breaking your download cap!

Now the reason I’ve done these updates you might ask? well yes, I have an iPhone now (and no I haven’t jailbroken it… yet…) but I was find it frustrating when popular blogs or websites don’t have a decent iPhone version thats either selectable or that it defaults to.

That said I’ve used the WPTouch plugin to be able to achieve this magical mobile mastery, but it could be easily done on a static website with a couple of changes to the head of your HTML files.

So go forth mobile warriors, take your iPhones in hand and surf the AGP in style!

This news made my day to day and marks a significant milestone for media. If your like me and your information hub is RSS then you’ll know the frustration of partial feeds. Of the newspapers out there that have any kind of web presence their contribution to your feed reader is for the most part poor for the following reasons:

1. Content is offered as a partial feed that makes to go to the source
2. Stories differ from the “paper” version
3. When you go to a newspaper’s website you can’t help feeling short changed and so you don’t bother

Beats me why the press has been slow to catch on and clinging to old media. I have long asked why, with all their resources and long standing strength as a print medium they have not grabbed new methods of publishing with both hands and changed with the times. They seem to want to cling to old traditions and refuse to budge. All to their detriment.

I can understand that they make their online content different to their hard-copy, but not as a full feed? What was with that and what difference does it make when you can advertise in RSS very easily these days.

The Gardian however is becoming a trail blazer and one that has trumped them all. Today they mark the first Newspaper globally to offer full feeds when you subscribe to their RSS feeds. Qudos, but better if I was English.

Bloggers and podcasters have known for ages that full feeds are the way to go. Persoanlly if a feed is partial it will have a short life if any on my feed reader. Most people that rely on RSS feel the same way. With a partial feed you may as well be surfing the web old style.

The only limitations with the Gardian’s feeds are that they don’t always carry the cartoons and graphics. If they doubt their rights to re-publish the story as an RSS feed then they will feed you a summary with a link to the whole story.

Nice work Gardian guru’s and I hope your the first of many. Newspapers are dead if they don’t get with the program and evolve. This move by the Gardian brings hope to the industry that is struggling to maintain readers in a world where people are turning to the web in increasing numbers to get up to date. It also means that the budgie might have to find something else to line his cage with…

I don’t mind a bit of Windows bashing, even the odd bit of Mac bashing they both deserve it now and then. However the latest commercial from Mac in their now famous Mac Vs PC series is a bit of a low blow has Apple looking a little silly.

For a marketing giant like Mac to be calling out Microsoft on their advertising expenditure or the reasons for it is the pot calling the kettle black in my opinion. Not only that I think Mac is clutching at straws in relation to the content of the ad. That is Vista is crap so you should be spending money on fixing that rather than advertising.

First up now that I have been running Vista for near on 4 months now I think I am entitled to have an opinion about it. Honestly, I like it. I am not one of these “frustrated” PC users that Mac seem to think are out there in droves. In fact I make up one of three hosts of this show that use Vista in one form or another and both Keith and Cait don’t mind Vista either.

I have not had issues running software, finding drivers or anything else that I might want to do and I am a geek. For the average user Vista might actually be a better choice than XP. The security is better, doing everyday things is simple and lets face it, it does look a lot better.

That said Vista has had issues and people were and maybe still are frustrated with those issues. Personally I am yet to come across one. However, I think many of the initial problems with Vista, at least the glaringly obvious and worst have been addressed.

So what does a big company with a reasonable advertising budget do when they think they have a product that is worth taking a second look at do? Advertise… and they can hardly be slammed by anyone for doing the same thing that Mac, Nike, Coke or any other huge company would do. In fact they would be stupid for not doing it. So it hardly a strong campaign looking at the Mac side of things to have a go at it. It all seems a bit juvenile and a simplistic ad that flies in the face of the supposed sophisticated ideal that Mac usually portrays.

I am not Apple bashing here, but in my opinion the Mac Vs PC thing is getting a bit old and they are finding it hard to come up with decent material. It is starting to show in the ads. Sure, even I found them witty and humorous initially, but it is starting to lose that appeal and getting like a school kid chucking rocks and calling names.

Apple I know your better, this time I think your looking a little dumb. I will probably never do this again; but I am going to quote from a YouTube comment and it pretty much sums it up (strangely enough):

“Apple is all about superficial and advertising so its odd for them to make a retarded commercial like this.”

svtcontour

I had a chat with Dave this afternoon to discuss when the next episode of the AGP would be coming out.  His house is almost back in working order save for a spotty wi-fi connection and the fact that his office hasn’t been put together yet. Add to that the fact that all three of us were buried with work stuff this week and you’ve probably guessed already that we’re not going to be able to record a show this weekend.

Thankfully the forum and the blog are here to keep you entertained until we get another show going (which should be next week.

If you haven’t done so already, check out these AGP related items while you wait for the next episode:

• Find out if your web alias is really your own in Tim’s post about UsernameCheck
• Read up on what happened to the Digital Photography Show in Dave’s post
• Check out Atmo’s review of the new MacBook Pro on the AGP forum

A big thanks to Tim for keeping the light on while the rest of us go AWOL.  We’ll try to get a few more posts up over the next week or so to keep you in the loop regarding our favorite geeky topics.  Thanks for hanging in with us, we’ll be back with another regular episode soon!