At last night’s Mullies meeting, the last for the year, we discussed a number of things. One issue was the Telstra bid to be the provider to the Federal Government of the National Broadband Network.
As discussed last night it seems that Telstra has recently opened up it’s ADSL 2+ capabilities to some other ISPs via wholesale. Westnet and People Telecom already have plans and Internode is coming.
More details and an interesting article at PC Authority
It will be interesting to do a comparison on prices and speeds available in Ulladulla when Internode rolls out. Check out Whirlpool for the lowdown here
Found this entry which discusses ways to keep your computer safe when travelling. Written by Chris Pirillo who is a bit of a legend among computer geeks
With laptops becoming more common and smaller it is easy to see how there are more going laptops going around. This provides more opportunity to thieves I guess. More likely though is that the machine is damaged in transit and the data is not backed up. We all know people who have lost vital info – of course it wouldn’t be us!
As always the #1 rules is “Back-ups Don’t leave home without them!”
Confession time – I just bought a new iPhone. One of the Aussie 3G models which is much sleeker than the hacked 2G US model I tried once before.
So far I am very happy with it. Not only is it a good phone with some unique features it is of course geek to the extreme!
One of the Apple tricks is to try to get you to pay for ringtones – you can download them from the iTunes store. But us crafty geeks know better. A quick search revealed Audiko.net
At Audiko you can download ringtones for old phones or for the new iPhone – completely free! You don’t even need the songs/sound on your PC. Just do a search and they will have it for you. Just find the ringtone you want and hit download for iPhone. When the download option comes up click “open with iTunes” and you are done. Awesome and so easy. Thanks Audiko.
At Mullies we have recently discussed RSS feeds as a way to keep up to date with websites and articles of interest. Here’s the link to the last item RSS - It's really simple
For those who prefer their news in an email/newsletter format below is a way to subscribe to feeds and have them delivered to you via email. I know some of you like to hoard, I mean archive, all your articles and storing the pdfs would be a great way to do that.
To use this service you will need to copy the url/address for the feed and paste it into the service at the Tabbloid site.
So if Google Reader or another RSS reader application doesn’t float your boat you might prefer this – give Tabbloid a go
RSS Feeds are probably the best way of receiving updates from favorite websites and services. They are however still more of a thing for the technical inclined Internet users and largely ignored by the average users. They do have a few other limitations like only being viewable in applications that support RSS News Feeds.
One option that has become popular in recent months is to create pdf documents out of RSS News Feeds which solves the accessibility problem. Tabbloid is a relatively new Internet service that can turn RSS News Feeds into pdf documents and send those news digest right to the user’s inbox.
This is done by pasting RSS News Feed urls into the form on the main Tabbloid website. The service will check the feed, display a preview of the last news items that have been posted and ask the user to accept or reject it. If the user accepts the feed it gets added to the list of feeds that will be processed.
It is possible to add multiple feeds which would then all be used to fill the pdf document. Options exist to generate the pdf right at the website or set delivery options to receive the pdf document in the inbox. The possible intervals are hourly, daily or weekly.
Here is a list of 150 free Flash based games you can play online. They are divided by type like Arcade or Action and feature some very simple and some very complex games.
Give Throw Paper a go for 10 minutes of mindless entertainment or Fantastic Contraption (pictured) for some real thought provoking fun
This list of some free resources available on the internet is from a girl named Emma. Rather than the games above these are useful tools to help you achieve something. Just like the specific programs you might have on your computer except these are accessible for free from anywhere via the web.
Warning: if you use these sort of online apps to do stuff be very careful about your privacy. Be conscious of what data you are sending out into the unknown.
I think Emma missed a few I would have included like: Gmail (or Google Apps if you own a domain) Google Reader Auctiva for creating those eBay auction listings AuctionStealer for winning the eBay auctions you bid on Delicious.com for storing your bookmarks on line and sharing them Blogger for creating and hosting a web blog Flickr or Picasa Web Albums for hosting photos online Last.fm for tracking and sharing your musical tastes Online file storage like Box.net or there are heaps of others and of course YouTube the world’s favourite online video sharing site
What online applications do you use or games do you play. Let us know so we can all check them out.
