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Archive
Posts from 2004 to 2017. This was a personal blog during a fairly chaotic decade in independent publishing — some of it tech commentary, some of it Australia, some of it ephemera. It’s kept here in full for anyone who arrives via an old link.
Current writing lives at SiliconANGLE.
Why Are Macs So Expensive In Australia?
Why are Macs so expensive in Australia
I hate Vista Already
8:45pm as I write this. At 12:30pm today I inserted Vista into my computer for an upgrade. Still isn’t working, after the worlds longest install process it just hung on booting up, the little loading ticker scrolling over and over and over again. Just finally worked out a way to re-install it without losing the […]
Pandora Go Away
Why do Pandora keep sending me emails telling me how wonderful they are when I’m blocked from using the site? I wasn’t blocked at first when I first heard the news that Pandora was blocking non-US users, but they’ve since implemented geo-blocking and now I can’t.
Microsoft Really Can Innovate
Microsoft Surface. It sort of reminds me a little bit of the old look down Pac Man arcade machines circa 1982 but it’s a lot more. The ability to recognise objects is unique and although I can’t see this being in every home (although it would make a cool coffee table) the retail possibilities are […]
TiVo Coming to Australia!
This is extremely good news: TiVo, the time-shifting digital video recorder that became a household name in the US, will come to Australia in 2008. For a small subscription fee plus the price of the hardware, Australians will be able to pause live high definition TV, fast-forward ads, record shows and series from any of […]
Survey Finds Qantas is Crap: Now There’s a Surprise (not)
The SMH reports on a Choice survey of Australian flyers that rated Qantas as the worst international airline flying out of Australia and 3rd out of 4 domestic airlines, the Qantas owned Jetstar coming 4th. According to radio reports Australians fly Qantas out of habit, and the frequent flyer program and safety record also help. […]
5inch: pretty CDs
Think Cafepress for blank CDs and DVDs: 5inch. Pretty. No idea why people would want piles of blank CDs’ with pretty prints on them, but it’s still pretty none the less.
Kylie: Hot or Not?
Kylie Hot or NotYou know it's a slow news day when the lead story on news.com.au has this photo with the words "Kylie hit the red carpet at Cannes in this interesting black dress and curious-looking shoes. Blogger Alison Godfrey asks whether the pop pocket rocket is losing her sense of style"Posted using a new […]
Twitter down again
For the LOVE OF GOD! Will Twitter ever be stable? it’s not letting me in again. GRRRRRRRRR. As soon as the US East Coast gets up, down goes Twitter.
Vale Technorati
Vale Technorati. The much loved blog search engine is no more, reborn as…well….something that isn’t a blog search engine any more. Steve Rubel suggests that Google killed Technorati but I’m sure he’s mixing this up with the Ask $100m algorithm campaign. The only one going to get killed there is Crispin, Porter + Bogusky when […]
Wallstrip/ CBS buy confirmed
Looks like the post I made on TechCrunch March 13 about CBS acquiring Wallstrip is confirmed. Thanks to my “source close to the deal” for giving me a heads up on it, you know who you are but would like to thank you none the less. Dollars aren’t publicly confirmed at this stage but given […]
CBS is Nuts! Bring Back Jericho
Via Chris Pirillo, Jericho has been cancelled by CBS in the US. To quote Jake from the end of series 1: nuts! I watch very little TV, but I’ve enjoyed every minute of Jericho, even if I’ve had to watch it away from my TV set as Channel Ten in Australia hasn’t shown the second […]
Supermarket 2.0
via Graywolf on Jaiku, very clever 🙂
Joined Jaiku
Enough is enough with Twitter. If you’re on Jaiku let me know http://duncanriley.jaiku.com Hopefully will see a lot of my Twitter contacts appear shortly, still love the idea and the conversation, but I can’t handle Twitter’s downtime.
Bugs in Google Reader?
I made the switch from Bloglines to Google Reader a while back, but I’m noticing a couple of things that are starting to become annoying. First is slowness in listing new posts. I notice it most with my own posts on various sites, I’ll post and it won’t appear in Google Reader for 2-3 hours, […]
Techmeme quirk
Shot taken today. Techmeme pointing to a February post from Tim O’Reilly. Coincidence that I linked to it at TechCrunch the same time that a couple of others did. Was third highest story until magically disappearing: I sense the hand of human intervention.
4.4% unemployment rate nationally, 2.7% in WA: struth
SMH coverage. TheWest coverage. Was it at school or Uni I sat through a lesson that taught that in the modern era full employment was really 5% because we could never again go lower? The SMH thinks it’s unlikely to cause interest rates to rise, I don’t agree. That last 4.4% would be 75% unemployable.The […]
Todays insane video bought to you by…
Tornadovideos.net This is insane. And yet amazing at the same time.
Mig33 lands $10M
Red Herring reported Friday that Mig33, a company originally based in Perth(Western Australia) but now on the West Coast took $10m in funding Accel Partners and RedPoint Ventures with Technology Venture Partners in for good measure. Mig33 offers mobile phone users voice over Internet Protocol, instant messaging, SMS-based text messaging, and social-networking services. Mig33 rolls […]
BlogDesk updates
New version of Blogdesk out. It’s a bug fix and where as I was having some issues posting to some blogs before, the new version works a treat. I’ve been using it for over 18 months now, and I still love it, mind you in this time I’m sure someone somewhere must have implemented inline […]