Last week, months of speculation came to an end as Vodafone announced that it had won the support of Apple to distribute the iPhone in Australia as well as the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa, and Turkey later this year.

For those keen to snap up the what some say is an overrated device, it looks like you may have to wait until Christmas to get your chance. Surprisingly, there was no mention of a 3G iPhone in any of the press releases, but logic would say only a 3G version of the iPhone would be released on this country… wouldn’t it?

Respected tech reviewer Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal has predicted the 3G iPhone will go on sale in June. It could be rolled out by Apple chief Steve Jobs at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9 in San Francisco or possibly on June 29, the phone's first sales anniversary.

The iPhone has certainly put Apple on the map. Last week on Tech Talk Radio, we spoke of the top 100 brands for 2008, in which Apple sat comfortably at number 7 and worth $55.206b. Of all the top 10 companies on the list, Apple’s brand value change was 123%, more than double anyone else, including the number 1 brand – Google. So it’s fair to say the iPhone has something to do with it.

So does this mean Apple has made the best phone ever to date? Many skeptics and pundits say companies that diverge in their product range tend to become jack of all trades and masters on none – but is this the case with Apple?

Some Apple purists, or as Adam calls them – slobbering Mac fanatics - were heard to say that this was the phone for them as soon as the device was released last year, and without even seeing it. Others were not so sure. And what of the Nokia’s, Motorolla’s, and Sony Ericsson’s of the world – as manufacturer’s of only mobile communications devices, would they stand a chance with Apple’s iPhone? After all that’s what they do. They don’t make computers, they don’t write Operating Systems, they just make phones.

Consequently the question needs to be asked – what’s in a brand? Are people so blind to the product that they’re buying because of the manufacturer behind it? Do some people just trust a brand that much, OR, have we all just become so blasé about technology that we just assume it works, it’s too complicated, or we just can’t be bothered researching another gadget? Only time will tell.

There's some new ways of doing things on the Microsoft horizon. Everyone can have 5Gb of cloud! What I hear you say? We'll talk to Harvey Sanchez - Online Services Strategy Manager for Microsoft about  Microsoft’s Live mesh!

Also on This Weeks Show

• Adam Turner talks looks at the long awaited iPhone
• Adam takes a call from Steve Jobs
• Harvey Sanchez - Online Services Strategy Manager for Microsoft talks to us about  Microsoft’s Live mesh and
• Tasmanian’s seem to be the victims of poor internet access
  

Our presenters blog! Why not check 'em out... Andrew McColm's Blog - McBlog Dr Ron's Blog - The Surgery Adam Turner's Blog - Seeking Nerdvana Lidija Davis's Blog - Blogwell

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This Week:
Michael Cremean - May 19, 2008

Michael is a sound engineer who mixes TV and radio sound tracks for on air. He's well versed in home theatre as well so he'll be joining us in the studio in the not too distant future to tell us why the ads on TV seem louder than the program, and the tricks to setting up home theatre systems.

Rico Malvar (Microsoft US)- Soon

Recently, Tech Talk Radio had the privilege of talking to Rico Malvar from Microsoft in the United States. Rico is a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and the Managing Director of Microsoft Research in Redmond. We spoke at length about future technology and what we can expect at the end of the next decade.

Rico was a founding member of the Signal Processing research group at Microsoft Research, which evolved into the Communication and Collaboration Systems group and the Knowledge Tools group.

His technical contributions at Microsoft include co-development of the Windows Media Audio digital audio format, image compression technologies for Microsoft Office, Tablet PC, Xbox 360 and Flight Simulator X, digital elevation map compression technologies for Flight Simulator X, rights management technologies for Windows Media, new video transform and quantization techniques that were adopted into H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), ink compression formats for Microsoft Office and Tablet PC, acoustic signal processing technologies for Windows Messenger, Microsoft Office RoundTable, and Windows Vista, and co-development of the HD Photo format for digital pictures, which is the basis for the upcoming JPEG XR standard.

His technical interests include audio and video signal enhancement and compression, multirate signal processing, signal decompositions (filter banks, transforms, wavelets), fast algorithms, coding theory, and electronics hardware

Simon Pearce (Symbion) May 26, 2008

Simon will tell us about the implementation of new technology such as Windows server 2008 into Symbion

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