Social networking has once again pushed the limits of the internet with the untimely demise of Michael Jackson who passed away last Friday aged 50.

Celebrations, vigils and synchronized moonwalks are being coordinated online. Sales of his music on Amazon and iTunes are soaring, according to The Times’ Media Decoder blog. Twitter is still populated with emotional outpourings of grief and messages commemorating Mr. Jackson’s music and legacy.

Mr. Jackson’s death is also prompting some people to ask questions about the life and history of the late singer. Mobile search service KGB, which employs human beings to answer text queries, has been flooded with questions about Mr. Jackson.

So did your internet connection seem slow early Friday morning? Traffic to news web sites globally sites spiked clocking in at one point at 4.2 million visitors per minute.

Some entertainment news Web sites including EOnline.com and PerezHilton.com appeared to load more slowly than normal. Sometimes they did not load at all, according to some observations during the hours immediately after the singers demise.

A Google spokesman said even Google had trouble keeping up. In California between 5:40 p.m. and 6:15 p.m. Eastern, after TMZ.com had said Mr. Jackson had died, some visitors to Google News experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson.

Twitter, the micro blogging site, went into meltdown with Jackson fans around the world using the social networking site to express their grief. Twitter said it had disabled the search field on users' home pages entirely, although it did not explain why. The troubles don't bode well for Twitter's prospects as a "real-time" search engine, which many believe is likely the service's most valuable feature.

The top five trending topics globally for the 48 hours after the death were Jackson Related, pushing discussion of the bloodshed in Iran off the radar.

Also on the show this week:

• The iPhone 3GS hits the streets this week an Adam puts it through the hoops, but will he upgrade.
  
• We take a look at the role of the internet in times of major breaking news
  
• Telstra Bill Shock for broadband users is back in the news again,
  
• Australian Pricing for Windows 7 was released during the week, and
  
• $4m later, Grocery Choice website dumped after supermarkets refuse to supply information.

Digital Radio is now a reality in Australia. Now that Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth have DAB+ digital radio blitzing its way through the airwaves, retailers finally have the green light to start selling digital radios full-steam ahead, rather than just having the odd display model that nobody in the shop quite knows how to use and can't be tuned in to anything. Tonight, we'll explain the virtues of digital radio in Australia, amongst other things. With the imminent switch on by broadcasters such as the ABC on July 1, we’ll tell you what to buy, what not to buy as well as the benefits to listeners and the all important quality of sound.

Also, as mobile broadband gets faster and faster in this country, the ability to use devices such laptops, netbooks and PDA’s on the go is now, more than ever, a viable contender to satisfy the needs of the “on the go” individual. Without a shadow of a doubt Australia’s incumbent telco, Telsta, has the fastest mobile broadband network with the best coverage as well as being the most expensive to subscribe to.

But before we jump to any conclusions, take a look at what you’re going to be doing online. Chances are, high data usage applications such as watching Youtube and massive downloads will be something you do at home or the office, not at the airport, riding the train or waiting in the dentist’s surgery. So ask yourself, how much bandwidth do you really need on the road?

If you’re like me, browsing the web, social networking, email, and ability to connect back into the office server is all I need. So would it surprise you that a couple of hundred Mb is all that’s really required for this on a monthly basis? Put aside the big data limits offered by some companies and evaluate their network speed and coverage. Look at what your currently using and where your using it (geographically speaking) and make an compare that with what’s on offer across all telcos.

Personally I rely on ADSL products at home and in the office, but, as I alluded to earlier, on the road, I only use a couple of hundred Mb a month. From a reliability point of view, and a no “bill shock” approach, I've chosen the incumbent, to provide my mobile broadband. Now my point is, I could have bought so much more broadband with other providers that I would’t have used. It would have been down on speed, lacking in coverage, and open up the potential for bill shock while roaming. For my situation of traveling inside and outside the main city centres, the choice was logical.

Now most modern handsets which use the 3rd generation network, have the ability to act as a modem to connect your laptop to mobile broadband. It’s not a new concept and standard 'out of the box' with phones like Nokia’s e71, but I was surprised to hear this week that Apple’s new iPhone, which has the ability to do this, needs to be activated by a carrier to allow this to happen. Out of the box, your iPhone will chat merrily to the internet EXCEPT when you want to allow a device, such as your laptop to connect to the net through it. So why not?

In the US, it was rumored that AT&T were going to charge a once of fee of $55 to allow tethering of the iPhone, which the company has said were false, but here in Australia Optus will charge you $10 per month for the privilege. That’s $120 a year just to allow your laptop to connect to the internet via your iPhone. That doesn’t give you any more data, only the ability to do what most other phones let you do for free!

No wonder Australian iPhone users have started downloading widely available configuration files to activate the device's tethering feature and bypass Optus' planned $10 monthly fee. And you though Telstra was bad…
Also on the show this week:

• Digital radio becomes a reality in Australia
  
• Australia climbs the international broadband ladder.
  
• The VHA merger goes ahead
  
• A phishing scam involving the Australian Tax Office dupes 200,000 people and
  
• Universal Music was awarded $1.92 million in the retrial of a Minnesota woman accused of swapping music over the Kazaa.

The trials and tribulations of technology in transit can be quite daunting for the uninitiated, or even the experienced for that matter. Last week I drove a couple of hundred kilometers down the Victorian coast line to the small holiday village of Inverloch. Not that the destination is relevant – it could have been any town in Australia, outside one of the main Central Business Districts.

Mobile communications is divided into two distinct components these days, mobile telephony and mobile data. If you’re rich enough to be connected to Telstra, Australia’s incumbent telecommunications provider, then chances are, you won’t have much to worry about. But if you’re consumer savvy and conscience of the drain on the hip pocket, then chances are, you’re with a different provider – even still, you may have two different providers, one for your mobile telephony and another for your mobile broadband.

Since the launch of handsets (smart phones) such as Apples iPhone, the Blackberry and Nokia’s E71, data has become more of a necessity than ever before. After all, why invest in these smart phones, which have been designed and built to deliver a vast range of internet services to the consumer on the go, if you aren’t going to use what’s on offer.

Before the smart phone hit the market, telcos saw data over the mobile phone network as a bit of a cash cow. But in the past year or so, pricing for mobile data is becoming comparable to that of voice. Even the Telstra “Rock of Gibraltar” has budged ever so slightly in the last 12 months on mobile broadband pricing. But beware the roaming display on your mobile phone, because this is where mobile data can become extremely expensive.

Mobile data can be charged anywhere from 50 cents to several dollars per Mb when you choose to use internet services on your mobile when roaming onto another carriers network.

Now on the face of it, it doesn’t sound too bad, but if you leave your handset on, with applications like Google Maps, Skype,or Fring, then you may be in for some bill shock, especially if your away from your home location for a while. Other processes that run on your smart phone such as email clients can also eat away at your mobile data plan, so the trick to traveling is turn off what you don’t need, or at least change the settings to manual. That way, you know when and how much your using.

One final piece of advice, as mobile broadband gets faster, unless you have substantial allocation of moble broadband, never leave you laptop unattended with you mobile broadband card connected. I did on the weekend to find a substantial swag of my allocation consumed by a fairly sizable windows update.

Just as well my account anniversary was only two days away.

Also on the show this week:

• Former Qantas pilot and aviation guru Mark Mayer joins us live in the studio
• Adam looks at mobile VOIP
• Microsoft to sell Windows 7 in Europe with no browser at all, and
• Apples WWDC has concluded and what have we learnt?

As we go to air tonight Mac-o-philes from around the world are converging on their equivalent of Mecca, the Annual Apple World Wide Developers Conference held in San Francisco. In just 8 hours time, the event’s key note speaker will address the throng of the apple faithful, so if you just can’t wait to hear what’s in store this year keep an eye on Macworld dot com, but if you want news and gossip as it happens, then twitter is the place for you.

Back home here in Australia this week, did you know it’s nation e-security week? The annual National E-security Awareness Week, which is a Federal Government initiative, aims to raise awareness about the importance of e-security among Australians.

This year, the week, is being held from 5-12 June and aims to help inform home users, students and small business about the simple steps they can take to protect themselves, their families and their businesses online.

A range of events and activities are being held around Australia in metropolitan, remote and regional areas to help Australians understand e-security risks. There are simple tips being promoted throughout the Week to help Australians use the internet in a secure and confident manner including…

    * Get a better, stronger password and change it at least twice a year.
    * Get security software, and update and patch it regularly.
    * Stop and think before you click on links or attachments from unknown sources.
    * Information is valuable. Be careful about what you give away about yourself and others online.

Tonight the panel will give you their tips for a safer online world for you and yours, the dos and don’ts when it comes to social networking, as well as email, and physical security, such as what should be between you and the world of cyberspace.

Every city in the world has places you wouldn’t want to go, and cyberspace is no different.

Also on the show this week:

• The Commonwealth Bank is up to pussies bow in hoax emails
  
• Adam surfs the Google wave, and it seems good
  The amazing world of controller free video games is here
  
• Acer to offer Google's Android OS on netbooks and
  
• Allegedly, Australian employees waste time on social networks! Say it’s not true!

Advertising is a mugs game and telcos are the biggest mugs of all, followed closely by car sales and real estate. I know that’s a generalization, but the last week has seen Australia’s Consumer watch dog crack down on advertisements which misleading and confuse consumers.

It’s about time the regulators changed the way advertisers dish up prices to consumers in this country. Obviously advertisers want us to buy, that’s why they do what they do, but why not tell consumers the TOTAL COST of a purchase.

Take motor vehicles for example. “$29990 + dealer delivery and government statutory charges’. That can add thousands to the total purchase price. You could rephrase it “$1000 for the tyres + car +  dealer delivery and government statutory charges”. It’s a bit silly – I know – but it emphasizes Component Pricing – something rampant in real estate and motor vehicle advertising.

The ACCC recently clamped down on this sort of behavior in the telecommunications sector, so now they’re moving on to other industries.

On May 25 the law in Australia changed. So what do the new laws require?

In short, where a corporation makes a price representation to consumers, it may only use a component price (part of the total price) if it also ‘prominently’ specifies the ‘single (total) price’ payable for the good or service (where a single figure price is quantifiable).

Let’s see what happens now. Next the ACCC should target these bloody infuriating cash-back deals. They’re on the rise at the moment and a complete pain in the you know what. Consumers have to jump through hoops and wait months to receive their offer – and why?

Why don’t they just discount the product at the point of sale?

Laptops, PC’s and software sales seem to be top of the cash back pile at the moment. What purpose does it server to either the manufacturer, distributor, reseller or consumer? None that I can see. So as the ACCC closes one door another opens.

Also on the show this week:

• Adam Turner looks at the HTC’s new offering here in Australia
  
• Robert Broomhead from the Wireless Institute of Australia talks ACMA office closure in Perth and Adelaide and gives us an insight into Amateur Radio.
  
• Illegal downloads go through the roof and
  
• Microsoft's Bing and Wave about to open.

As you drive around the suburbs and towns of Australia, hard rubbish collections draw their fair share of old television sets and computer screens. You know the ones, the old CRT or Cathode Ray Tube displays.

Have you noticed in recent times, as we move towards digital television and lcd computer screens, the quantity of these devices on or nature strips is on the increase? A main component in these old CRT’s is lead – a fairly toxic substance which you don’t really want to mess with.

Currently there are national  recycling programs, with the exception of a few small business incentives such as Mobile muster. So what do you do with the old 80cm TV which still works just fine?

For years the nation's old television sets and computers have been tossed out and ended up in landfill - 1.5million a year to be precise. But soon a new national scheme will give Australian's the option of recycling their old electronic equipment. In Tasmania last week, the Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett met with state environment ministers to discuss the worsening problem of e-waste. As with all meetings of this nature, the ministers agreed that there was a problem and a degree of urgency to set up what they hope will be a national program to recycle electronic waste where possible and adequately dispose of materials which can’t be recycled.

Electronic waste can contain materials which are highly sort after. Copper, gold, and aluminum are three to name a few. There’s also the issue of dangerous materials such as lead and arsenic which need to be disposed of correctly.

Australian TV suppliers have proposed a permanent national TV collection, recycling and community education scheme that could be ready to roll-out within six months. It would be funded solely by suppliers provided there is effective Federal regulatory underpinning to deal with free-riders or companies indifferent to their environmental obligations.

Australia needs to come into the 21st century.

Government needs to regulate sooner than later, and after last week’s ministerial meeting, this could be done as soon as November this year. I guess it’s a start.
For more information visit www.reborn.org.au


Also on the show this week:

• Adam Turner looks at the roll out of Digital Radio in Australia.
  
• How ’bout storing all your movies on one DVD. Dr James Chon from Swinburne University tells how
  
• China, Canada, Spain on copyright piracy watch list, and
  
• A New, improved iPhone is expected next month! and
• The top 10 tech disappointments  

Cast your mind way back to the year 2000. We had the millennium bug, an Air France Concorde crashes near Paris, the US Supreme Court decides in favor of George W, Bush in split decision over 2000 Presidential election and Sony launched the PlayStation 2. Something that may have slipped your mind here in Australia is that the year 2000 was the start of terrestrial digital television in this country. This begs the question: How has digital TV evolved in this county over the past 9 and a half years?

Remember when the music went digital? Ten years after the launch of the Compact Disc, you’d need to be a detective to find an old vinal album in a shop anywhere, but visit your local white goods store here in Australia and you can still by an old analogue tv should you want.
The Australian Government didn’t help the take up very much as they chose to offer protection to the then infant Foxtel, an upstart cable TV provider. Multi Channeling was strictly taboo for at least the first 5 years. When digital TV was launched, the government told everyone that the turn off of the analogue TV broadcasts would start in 2008. That would give everyone plenty of time to migrate to digital.

The ABC and SBS were the first broadcasters to start running different program on their alternate digital channels, but there were strict regulations as to what could be shown. It wasn’t until January this year that the multi channeling law was relaxed, some 9 years after the inception of DVBH in this country.

A group consisting of the 5 free to air broadcasters got together and conceived Freeview, a somewhat misleading campaign which was launched in 2008 to promote 15 different TV channels free of charge to your TV via the airwaves. We’re almost six months in to 2009 and what have we got to show for it? Not much. Channel10 now has one HD channels and 2 SD channels. Recently they launched One HD, a sporting channel where you can watch anything from basket ball to tiddlywinks. You can watch this on two out of three of these channels to the cost of a HD feed of their regular program.

The ABC are leading the pack, as per usual, with 1 HD channel and 3 SD channels. ABC1 and ABCHD run the same content, ABC 2 runs catch up TV and the odd first run, and ABC has just received funding for a 24 hour kids channel.

SBS also utilize the channels well with different programming across the board, but as for 7 and 9, they’re not in any hurry to utilize their alternate channels.

To add salt to the digital wound, there seems to be a lot of confusion around technical standards for the delivery of digital TV in Australia only. Free TV Australia are shying away from the globally excepted MPG streams, and pushing for a new system called MHEG, something that only a couple of other countries are using. This in turn means manufacturers of domestic receivers are reluctant to make equipment for our market resulting in a shortage of devices such as PVR’s.

So here we are, nearly 10 years away from the launch of digital TV in Australia, and six months away from the beginning of the shutdown of analogue tv and what have we got to show for it? No one government or organization is to blame, responsibility needs to be shared across many organizations, but one thing’s for sure, other countries destined to go down the path of migration from analogue to digital television, can look to Australia’s effort as an example of how not to do it.

Also on the show this week:

• Adam Turner  heads to CeBit to talk VOIP
  
• Google trips of the power lead again
  
• Sony and Pioneer are doing it tough
  
• Dr Ron talks us through WolframAlpha
  
• Conroy on the NBN backfoot over the oppositions threat to block the bill and
  
• 3 new apps from Google

It’s a sad indictment of organizations that try and lure consumers in, on what at face value, seems a pretty good deal, but then garrotes them with the fine print. Unfortunately this is all too common in the world of technology with broadband plans and mobile phone plans. It’s becoming so much of a problem that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has stepped up its policing in the local market.

Most of Australia’s telcos have incurred the wroth of the ACCC over misleading and tricking consumers into buying their products and services, and currently attention is being focused on Dodo, the Melbourne based ISP which resells bandwidth bought from other telcos.

I suspect the ACCC’s gaze will move again to Optus, as the company releases of new range of mobile phone caps, which, on the whole seems terrific, but it’s only when you read the fine print, do you realise the trap that will snare those who choose not to study their plans in detail.

As reported by Cnet Optus Cap plans now come in four flavours: $19, $49, $59 and $79, with the two more expensive plans offering free SMS and MMS. The plans all offer generous call allowances too; the $49 and $59 offer $680 worth of calls per month, but only half of this allowance can be used on local and national calling (what Optus calls Optus2Anyone). The other half of the allowance is dedicated to Optus2Optus calls for calling other Optus GSM mobile numbers and Optus fixed line phone numbers, and can only be spent after the first half of your spend has been reached.

This means that before you reach the first $330 of calling allowance each month your calls to other Optus customers are counted as Optus2Anyone, and after you've exceeded $330 you'll only be able to call Optus customers for the rest of the month, or be billed at the standard call rate for your plan — 80 cents per minute on the $49 and $59 plans.

After comparison with others, the ambiguity of what Optus is offering becomes obvious. Separating the call value of Optus2Optus calls from standard calls is a great idea for a capped plan, but not letting Optus customers spend Optus2Optus credit at the same time they spend Optus2Anyone credit is sneaky at best. As is advertising the not-factually-incorrect "$680 worth of calls".

So as the 120mm cannons of the ACCC warship take focus on Optus, here’s a timely reminder to consumers to remember if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is, and when it comes to telcos be sure to read the fine print, because once you’ve signed the contract that’s it. You may be in 2 years(or more) of hell. 

Also on the show this week:

• Adam Turner shares his Star Trek experience on the 3rd biggest movie screen in the world...
  
• eBay takes on iTunes in the online music game
• Jeff Gates tells us all about Media Servers
• Which media server is best for you?
  
• Telsta’s guard changes again and
  
• The release candidate of Microsoft’s new Operating system windows 7 is now a week old so we’ll take a look at its reception in the broader community.

Remember when the humble mobile phone was just that – a device for making and receiving telephone calls while out and about? Its evolution into what we now call a smart phone over the past few years has been nothing short of amazing to watch, as these small ubiquitous devices have mastered the power of music, television, photography, GPS navigation, and more recently, relatively high speed internet access.

The world of communications is now virtually at our finger tips, and one of the biggest leg ups for these smart phones in recent times has been the Apple iPhone, a phone which has become a ‘must have’ accessory for millions of people around the world.

With the iPhone comes the apps store, a one stop authorized shop for iPhone users to expand the possibilities of their device and turn it into something much more than a telephone, something unique and personal. One of the best thing that iPhone has done, is brought about competition in the mobile phone sector the likes of which we’ve never seen before. What with Nokia, Blackberry and Sony Ericsson all vying for a piece of the action, we’re starting to see the phone manufacturers compete in the biggest competition of all, the seamless integration of all these technologies into our lives. So who’s going to win?

Currently there are three different operating systems for modern day smart phones, Apple’s OS 3.0, Symbian’s s60 and of course Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. Stand alone, they’re all terrific and if you just want a mobile phone to make and receive calls, they’re all pretty much identical. But when it comes to running applications and multi-tasking - that’s running many apps at once, then there’s a need to choose your OS carefully, as not all are the same.

Another fantastic benefit of today’s modern smart phone is the ability to bring your desktop lifestyle to your phone. Some devices do it better than others, but with nearly all providers providing internet access these days, the time has definitely come to embrace these phones for what they truly can do. The automatic seamless synchronization of contacts and appointments from home to office and smart phone is now a reality. Add a new contact to your phone and it magically finds its way to your desktop applications and vice versa. How “today” is that! Well let’s take that a step further.

For years now Telco’s have been living in fear of voice over IP products such as Skype.

They’ve seen more and more voice traffic head down this path because it’s cheaper than making a traditional voice call on fixed or mobile telephone lines, and because there’s no distance issue, there’s no real cost issue. So let’s marry the smart phone with mobile broadband to Skype, and what do we get? A marriage made in heaven.

No longer do you pay a flag fall and per 30 seconds for a call, if your friends are Skype enabled it costs virtually nothing to talk as long as you like to anywhere in the world from your mobile phone.

Take Nokia’s s60 enabled E71 handset. Load up the Skype application; get yourself a free regular Skype account and your phone doubles as a phone and a Skype client. Friends can call you on your mobile phone from anywhere in the world for free instead of paying for the use of a traditional phone circuit. By now you’re thinking – what’s the catch, why would the phone companies allow you to do this? Honestly, I don’t know. But it’s here and now so let’s us it.

In Australia, Hutchison’s 3 network have an $8 per month data add on which also give you 4000 minutes of Skype talk time. In the UK, it’s soon to be free and unlimited if it’s not already. The smart phones treat Skype just like any other telephone call. If someone calls you while you’re on a call, Skype or mobile, your caller will get to leave a voice message as per normal.

It’s a truly remarkable marriage of mobile phones with broadband and VoIP, and the audio quality – well, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. So as we head into a world of being truly connected, maybe it’s time for the Telco’s to rethink the role of the humble mobile phone – no longer will we be buying call time,  they’re now mobile data terminals with the power of desktop computing at our fingertips.

Also on the show this week:

• Adam Turner has mixed success downloading movies with TiVo
• Windows 7 set to come online sooner than later,
  
• Apple to make their own chips and
  
• Conroy reckons the NBN will be cheaper than first thought
  

With the pending roll out of Australia’s National Broadband Network, the shake up and fall out of the telecommunications industry continues. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the project would be fast tracked, meaning the construction of the backhaul component of the project, that is, the telecommunications links that connect suburbs together could start as early as September this year.

The announcement a few weeks ago by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that the Government would ‘go it alone’ in building the network came as a surprise to many, and probably none more so, than the current players in the Australian Telecommunications Landscape.

The government would create an entity to roll out the NBN which would be 51% government owned, leaving the remaining 49% open for interested parties to buy into the project to a level of no more than 15%.

Many rejoiced in the realization that this would be the end of Telstra’s monopolistic approach to communications in Australia, others in the fact that this was the largest infrastructure project in Australia for decades. Parallels were drawn to the building of the snowy river scheme and the national road system.

The reality is that the copper that runs to every house in Australia, is about to be replaced with a fibre optic in the next several years, moving Australia well and truly into the modern, connected world of the 21st century. A delivery platform that should last well and truly beyond our life times. But let’s look at the current dilemmas faced by the telcos.

Telstra has never been as quite as they are right now. With the exodus of the three amigos and their hench men, and the governments new NBN plans, the monopolistic and arrogant attitude of the company is being humbled by the leveling of the playing field, something that Telstra has never had to deal with until now.

Separation of Telstra’s retail and wholesale businesses is almost a certainty something that the telco has been dead set against for the past few years, in fact, it was the underlying reason why it didn’t tender a valid bid to build the NBN. It wanted a guarantee from the government that it wouldn’t be separated a guarantee that was not forthcoming.

The NBN announcement has also had a major impact on the business plans of smaller telcos. ISP IPrimus has all but given up the installation of new DSLAMs, now preferring to quadruple its coverage area for ADSL2+ by doing a deal with Telstra to resell its ADSL2 products. This begs the question What about the other ISPs?

What incentives do they now have in rolling out expensive DSLAMs on a copper network which will soon be redundant. Will other ISPs go the way of IPrimus? If so, what happens to competition in the next 5 years or so, will Telstra win by default? Time will tell, but it seems that the rocky road of broadband in Australia will remain unmade for the next few years at least.

Also on the show this week:

Adam Turner takes a look ICE TV’s high court win over the nine network
It was Google last week, this week it’s Microsoft’s turn for profits head south
Apple red faced over an offensive game which made it to their online store
We find out all about the technology behind Blue Track

At what point in your personal life do you find that you no longer control the technology in your life, but it controls you? I mean, when was the last time you did a technology census in your home?

Why not stop and think for a moment about a few simple questions.

• How many remote controls do you have in the basket on the coffee table that do exactly the same thing?
• How many active SIM cards do you have for mobile communications in the family?
  
• What is the ratio of humans to computers in the household?
  
• What is your primary source of music in the house hold – CDs or a file server?

And while on the subject of servers, how many do you have at your place?

If the ratio of technology to humans in your household is greater than 1, then chances are you a victim of technology! So what can be done about it, and more importantly, do you want to do anything about it?

Now while we’re on the subject of technology, how addicted are you to today’s internet? Do you think you can go cold turkey and switch off all your gadgets without doing yourself or someone else for that matter some serious harm?

Relax, because help is at hand! The team at netaddiction.com have put together a little survey to help you come to terms with your alleged problems. It’s a 20-item questionnaire that measures mild, moderate, and severe levels of Internet Addiction.

So if you’ve ever wondered if the internet is just something you can now no longer live without, or if someone near and dear to you is just beyond help, then do the test and know once and for all.

Also on the show this week:

Adam Turner takes a look at the latests confusion over Freeview..

Google profits head south

We take a look at the changing face of Australian Broadband and

Microsoft’s Martin Gregory joins the panel to talk about a new initiative to get small business it’s own server.

Happy holiday break to all our listeners.

This week we take a look back some of the best of for this year with Dr Ron.

The full studio crew will return next week with a comprehensive look at the new Australian broadband landscape.

Well, no matter where Google go these days it seem almost lay down misere (Australian Slang something that is a certainty) that controversy will follow. Street view is no exception and the good folk of Broughton, in Buckinghamshire, England, don't want a bar of it.

The Google Street View car (pictured above) was blocked from filming last week by angry residents, led by Paul Jacobs, who alerted neighbours after spotting the car from his window. Mr Jacobs called police, who arrived to find a crowd in dispute with the Google driver, but the car moved on.

And while on the subject of funny, it seems that Australian technology humor is alive and well, well at least on April fool’s day last week. There were many spoofs which went past as blatant tom foolery, and then there were some that made you stop and wonder. Really? No. On opening up my mail client on that fateful Wednesday morning I was greeted with the headline “Conroy dumped as minister for broadband” What? Really? But the PM is out of the country… then it clicked! Ahhhh, April Fool’s day.

Having almost had my first cup of coffee for the morning I wondered what other gems were going to pass by on an occasion that tends to allow the normally stiff upper lip media commentators an opportunity to let their hair down, and publish headlines which would normally never see the light of day.

I continued to read the piece on Conroy’s supposed dismissal by staff writers at the ISP and Telecommunications industry discussion site.Whirlpool.net.au. “Conroy has come under increasing fire in recent weeks as the figurehead for the government's ISP level filtering plan and the national broadband network (NBN).” That he did. “The move leaves the government's unpopular ISP filtering plan up in the air. Conroy had recently appeared on both the ABC and SBS to champion the policy, where he met significant opposition from panelists and the studio audience.” Which also was true!

It wasn’t long before computerworld.com.au entered the fray. In an article published by reporter Darren Pauli, he reported that Telstra had announced it would split its retail and wholesale arms if it won the $4.7 billion National Broadband Network following secret talks with communications minister Stephen Conroy. Gullible readers swallowed the bait, so much so that the article caused a spike in Telstra shares. Ahhh, Oooops. What do you thing the ASIC would say about this?

And then by late afternoon it was ZDnet’s turn to give us all heart palpitations by publishing that Conroy had awarded the NBN deal to a Surprise group of bidders - a secretive consortium backed by the wealthy Packer and Murdoch families. Packer and Murdoch in a JV? Not in my lifetime I thought. As I read on, it became more and more fanciful, to a point where it just had to be read aloud to the whole Tech Talk office.

The report stated: “Packer said the group had headhunted well-known technology executive and entrepreneur Jodee Rich to lead the new consortium, which would be known as "One.Tel". Fellow Australian technology luminary Brad Keeling will act as the executive team's liaison with its board.”

By this stage in the afternoon, I was enlightened to think that in these times of gloom and doom, we have one national figure that we could rely on in Australia for a good laugh, one person who’s credibility shines above all others, one who is a key player in all three stories that caught my eye this day, the right honorable senator Stephen Conroy! What a national treasure. And like all national Australian treasures, let’s sell him off. Seems he’s already found his way to eBay on this fateful first day of April in 2009.

This week on TTR

Conroy up for sale on eBay, but at what price?
Adam Turner asks when does a notebook cease to be a notebook.
The ACCC takes issue with Voda-Hutch merger
Hutchison’s 3 announces their roaming deal with Telstra and
Scientists build the world’s most powerful laser

Last week I mentioned a storm was brewing over the parliamentary offices of the minister for Broadband Communications and the Digital economy, Senator Steven Conroy. Last Thursday night on the ABC’s Q&A program, the winds of change started to whip up a cynical audience into a feeding frenzy as they hoped to hear directly from the minister, exactly what he had in store for Australian’s and how it was going to affect them.

What we saw was an audience which had almost turned into a sea of hecklers, and not for reasons of anger, but for what appeared to be loss of interest and confidence in the Minister. As with most politicians, the rhetoric flowed, but as the discussion continued, the embarrassing ministerial gaffs kept flowing, almost to a point where the minister was laughed down.

Listen here (10sec)

To add insult to injury, the Office of Film and Literature Classification (the OFLC), the organisation which the government considers the definitive source of what is good or otherwise, had its website hacked just moments before the minister made his television appearance.
The pièce de résistance from Senator Conroy was when he was asked whether he would consider publishing the black list to which he responded that publishing the list would defeat the purpose of having a list – a genuine conundrum. The irony of Conroy's comments wasn't lost on the audience, nor the show's host Tony Jones.

It wasn't the only embarrassment for Conroy, who was forced to concede that a mistake had been made blocking a website carrying images of controversial works by nude photographer Bill Henson, and of course the Russian Mafia were behind the inclusion of a Queensland dentist. This wore particularly thin with the crowd becoming more cynical by the moment.

Listen here (40 sec)

Conroy said that the dentist site "had been a good bit of fun this week" The half hour that was given to the topic on Q&A concluded with a rather frustrated minister trying to get the governments message home. You’ll hear all about it later in Tech Talk Radio.

You can watch Q&A here (while it lasts)

This week on TTR

Microsoft’s leak Windows 7 Release Candidate
Google feel the pinch of the GFC with staff sackings
Adam Turner asks if Bluray’s days are numbered
As Daylight saving draws to a close, what’s in store for our various gadgets which keep time for us and
More highlights from Senator Conroy’s recent grilling on the ABC’s Q&A program.

A storm is brewing over the parliamentary offices of the minister for Broadband Communications and the Digital economy,  Senator Steven Conroy. One of the 2007 election promises of the Rudd government is seemingly becoming a little more problematic than first thought. Protecting our children on line at first glance seems to be a noble and proper thing to do, but what’s now becoming evident, is the problems associated with implementing such a policy and spinning it in such a way, that is has a positive connotation  - that is protection of our kids – how can that be bad? On the other side of the coin, you have that ugly word censorship – a word that no politician would ever want to use in context with homeland policy. OK, nice idea, now let’s implement it.

So the first thing Senator Conroy needs is cooperation with those organizations providing the community with connectivity to the internet. There are two possible outcomes here, a positive – “yeah sure”, we can help with that, or a ‘you’ve got to be kidding – “bugger off”. What do you think the result would be? History now shows that the latter was the response of all the major ISP’s. Some (iiNet) even offered to help out to prove that what the minister was proposing simply wouldn’t work. Funnily enough, that offer was not taken up by the minister’s office.

Late last year, a list was finally published containing the names of six small ISP’s who the government had chosen to be the guinea pigs in its Australia wide filtering system. The next, and possibly most dangerous part of this whole process was to start compiling a list of websites that would be blocked by these ISPs. This onerous task was given to ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority. This list, in anyone’s terms would be a black list. A list that, if it ever found its way into the public arena, would be extremely detrimental to the governments cause because it would be considered a “censorship” list – a list of sites that the Rudd government didn’t want you see.

Last week the inevitable happened, this list became public through the website Wikileak.
Not only does it look like the government need legislation for ISP compliance in the implementation of this filter, but it’s now under criticism about what is on and not on the list, the list that was supposed to protect our children online, and the lack of security surrounding the list. On one hand the government doesn’t want to be seen as censors of the internet, and on the other it wants block access to sites which it believes is detrimental to the nation. The two concepts are mutually exclusive.

There seems to be a growing resistance to the Rudd Government’s policy both from many factions of society within Australia. At what point does the government reevaluate its policy? At the moment getting any form of legislation through the senate to force ISPs to comply seems to be lost cause, so what rabbit is Conroy going to pull from his hat? Chances are the hat is empty, and his deck of cards was four cards short. The good news is he’s still has the joker, which he just might have to play to disperse the perfect storm.

This week on TTR

Susan McLean, former Victoria Police Officer, who was Victoria Police’s first ‘Cyber Cop’, joins the panel to discuss the current trends in cyber bullying. Susan has a 27 background in law enforcement and is considered an expert in the area of cyber safety and young people.

Microsoft’s IE8 officially hits the streets,
Lidija Davis talks Facebook and
Adam Turner joins us live in the studio.

Last week Telsta announce a $300M upgrade to its cable system in Melbourne by installing DOCSIS 3.0, which will be the first stage of a national rollout. DOCSIS has been around since 2006 and stands for data over cable service interface specification, and is the software needed to use hybrid fibre coaxial cable (HFC) for symmetric internet services. So is this the beginning of the end of the federal governments National Broadband Network? Some columnists believe it is.

It’s easy to be cynical about the motives behind Telstra’s non compliant bid to be part of the National Broadband Network, but history will show that Telstra, like Apple, have always had the approach to business that they will do it when and how they want, in a time that suits them and most definitely following no one else’s agenda. The NBN is no different to Telstra.

Already Australia’s incumbent Telco has a RF broadband network far faster than its competitors, and with coverage that far exceeds anyone else’s as well. This also seems set to double by the end of the year from 21Mbs to 48Mbs. Add to this the Cable upgrade in metro areas to 100 Mbs and it makes the governments 12 Mbs look like dial up.

What’s interesting is that Telstra seem to be looking to move their customers off the copper unbundled local loop to cable, something that does not fall under regulation. So what will happen to the maintenance of the copper once the migration ramps up? Let me answer a question with a question, Why would anyone maintain something they had no need or use for anymore?

Australia has two cable networks covering about 2.5 million of those houses and businesses in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. One of them - the Optus one - is in mothballs because ULL ADSL also levels the playing field with Telstra and makes more sense, cost-wise. And as Alan Kohler said in Business Spectator last week, there's one thing Telstra hates, and that's a level playing field - thus the $300 million on DOCSIS 3.0 for its cable in Melbourne, with the rest of the network to come.

To get a return on this investment, Telstra will work hard to switch all of those customers over to cable and away from copper, which means there won't be enough customers left to make it worth spending money on nodes in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and chucking away all the existing ADSL equipment in the exchanges - especially considering how hard it is to raise money these days.

High speed broadband is on the way for some of us, albeit in Telstra time, but the longer Conroy procrastinates over the NBN, the bigger the egg will be that will ultimately find its way to the governments face.

This week on TTR

Adam Turner looks at the looming competition for Apples iPhone
Is Twitter on the market?
Choice finds biggest tech rip-offs
Charging batteries just got a whole lot faster and
The World Wide Web turns 20

In these days of instant information at the click of a button, would it surprise you that governments around the world are becoming more and more concerned as to what their citizens are accessing online?

The Australian Government counts itself amongst some of these nations, and what’s more, their attempt to protect Australians online seems to gasping its last breath. With the trial of internet filtering being offered to all ISPs, the government chose to test the technology with only six of the smallest.

The Government's plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship was effectively scuttled last month, thanks to independent Nick Xenophon’s decision to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation required to get the scheme started.

With the Australian internet filtering bill now hopefully dead in the water, it’s timely to look at some of the other countries which actively participate in internet censorship. Two that come to mind are China and the United Arab Emirates. It’s as obvious as the nose on your face, that some governments just don’t want citizens to see things, either for political or moral reasons, but in these hi-tech days, there’s normally ways around things.

To draw attention to internet censorship, Reporters Without Borders is throwing its first annual International Day against Cyber-Censorship on March 12. The organization will stage VIRTUAL PROTESTS against the jailing of "cyber dissidents" and blocked Web sites in countries where riot-control goons would crack your head if you actually protested there for real such as North Korea, and China.

You'll be able to choose an avatar, and make a protest sign. The virtual protest sounds like a safe alternative to actually protesting, but Reporters Without Borders says "many Internet users will be taking a risk to demonstrate online." The protest starts at 11am Paris time March 12 and lasts for 24 hours.

This week on TTR

Adam Turner, a recent convert to Apple, is preying to the Cupertino gods for a sign of bluray.

Twitter again rises to prominence with last Fridays Magnitude 4.7 Melbourne Earthquake

Optus parent SingTel and technology retailers JB Hi-Fi have been promoted to the Standard and Poor's ASX 100 and

Ad agency director, Photographer and philathopist Michel Lawrence joins us live in the studio to talk about digital photography

Last Thursday Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo, possibly the most despised CEO in Australian corporate history, told the Telstra board and the shareholders that he would finish up at the end on June 30, 2009 and would not stay on as the CEO of the company. Trujillo announced his departure on the same morning Telstra announced a first-half net profit of $1.92 billion, down from $1.94 billion in the previous corresponding half.

The news was received by a range of sectors with one underlying message, Good bye and good riddance. It could also be argued that Trujillo’s reign has not been a happy time for shareholders: Telstra’s share price has fallen from $5.07 on the day he was appointed chief executive in July 2005 to around $3.73 at the time of his announcement.

Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, when asked about Sols planned returned to the US, responded with “Adios Amigo” with an undertone that typified the feelings of most Australians.

A senior research analyst from stockbroking firm EL and C Baillieu, Ivor Ries, says Mr Trujillo will be best remembered for his outspoken stance against the regulator and both the former and current Federal Governments.

He said “In terms of public perception, he and his colleagues, Phil Burgess etc, were seen as real stirrers and trouble makers and I'm not sure whether it actually helped improve the Telstra brand at all, but as far as the major shareholders were concerned, they were happy with the way he behaved and what he did."

The Union representing 12,000 Telstra employees says it hopes Mr Trujillo's resignation will lead to a change of attitude within the company about ongoing wage negotiations. And change is what the company now needs more than ever.

Return to the shareholders were nearly always at the top of Sol’s adgenda. Everything he did was always spun back for the good of the share holders, so for this, he was to be admired. His undoing was his misunderstanding that the shareholders were Australian, and Australia was falling backwards in technological advancements compared to the rest of the world because of his policies. If he was doing it for the country then he would be doing it for shareholders. But alas, it wasn’t to be.

Instead, he leaves Telstra, and the country with more than $20m in his pocket for the years work, and in his wake, a company which is now despised by most Australians, share prices that have never been lower, and more disheartend, disgruntelled and apathetic employees than you can count.
His departure news comes one month after Telstra announced chief operations officer Greg Winn was leave the company to return to the United States.

This week on TTR

Adam shares his thoughts on Twitter and Face Book
Dr Ron invests in an Android
Internode launches 100Mbit fibre to the home
Google explains Gmail troubles and
Google pledges to support EU's Microsoft case

Mobile communications is back in the news this week with Telstra trumpeting the launch of the new 21MBs next G mobile phone network. But what does it mean to those using the mobile network? Well… not much. Marketing departments love touting the maximum possible. Included in Telstra’s press release was a report from a company called Concept economics – not to be confused with access economics, the governments preferred supplier of statistical and analytical information.

According to the report, Concept economics define Next G as a 3G digital mobile network that can achieve very high data transfer speeds (for a mobile network) of up to 21 Mbps burst speed.3 This compares favorably to the maximum ADSL broadband speeds currently available in many rural and remote, and some urban, areas. The Next G network is also faster than other Australian 3G
Networks. For example, Optus’ 3G/HSPA network has typical speeds of between 512 kbps and 1.5 Mbps, and has a theoretical maximum speed of 3.6 Mbps.

A somewhat misleading comparison between the two telecommunications providers. Telstra is spruiked at speeds of up to 21 Mbps per second – the unachievable maximum, versus Optus’s typical, achievable speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps, and this is on the first few pages of the 61 page document. There’s nothing like an even playing field when it comes to comparing horses for courses, but then again, we are talking Telstra here. One has to ask if Concept Economics is a division of the Telstra marketing department.

In other Telco news this week, Hutchison’s 3 managed to lure some 5000 disgruntled iPhone users away from the Telstra, Optus and Vodaphone networks. Not bad for a company that doesn’t sell Apple’s iconic mobile phone and who also posted yet another loss of $163.1m for the full year to December 31 2008. It will be interesting to see how 3 and Vodafone pair up being the two biggest loss generating tacos.

And while we’re on the subject of mobile phones, have you tried buying a handset that meets your requirements these days? Ever since the iPhone hit the market, it seems like the major manufactures’ of handsets has dropped the ball. Very few handsets have emerged over the past year and those that have, have been less than enticing. So what’s going on? Is it the evolution of net books and iPhones that has brought about the demise of the humble mobile phone? Maybe demise is too strong a word, but seriously – try replacing your current handset with something that works for you. Maybe the manufacturers need a stimulus package as well.

This week on TTR

Grace Kerrison, director of Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business in Australia tells us about the latest microsoft mobile habits survey

Adam shares his thoughts on Telstra’s next G upgrade and files a report from Queensland where he's attending the Media Connect Kickstart Conference and speaks to Ruslan Kogan and Mark Helvadjian the General Manager Consumer platforms group at Yahoo 7.

Sol Trujillo puts an ad in the lost and found column and

Choice (an Australian consumer protection group) wants to code of practice to be introduced to protect users from rogue ring tones.

One week ago, the worst fires in Australian history destroy the lives of many Victorians, wiped several towns including Marysville and Flowerdale, off the map, and redefined disbelief in the eyes of many Australians, and people around the world.

On what is now known as Black Saturday, some reports said that Victoria was the hottest place on earth, reaching 46.2 degrees at the official bureau of Meteorology measuring station in the CBD, but reaching temperatures in the low 50’s in outer lying suburbs and rural areas. Add to this the fatal mixture of a strong northerly wind,  plenty of forest fuel and a few arsonists, and the state was set to burn.
What happened next has now been indelibly etched into Australian History. The massive loss of life and property has never been seen on a scale like this before, and, as we go to air today, fires are still burning in some of the most beautiful countryside in the Country.

As Australian’s come to terms with life in the post Black Saturday era, attention will now turn to rebuilding communities and lives which were decimated in few short moments on February 7. Communication – it’s success and failures, is just one topic up for discussion. Telstra, Australia’s incumbent telco, was hit hard. Its infrastructure badly damaged where it was needed most. Telephone exchanges and mobile phone base stations were wiped out, just as fast as houses.

So what can we learn from the experience? In these early days it would be naive to jump to any conclusions, after all, that’s what the royal commission will do, but now is the time to discuss ways that will better prepare us for the next fire which unfortunately in this country is inevitable. It’s clear that people in the path of such fires need clear and concise information to help them make the best decision at the time. This needs to be delivered in a timely mannor with the least amount of impact on the telephony services.
A recent report reveals the Federal and the states Governments baulked at the $20 million cost of a telephone-based alert system that would have given early warning of the deadly Black Saturday bushfires. The confidential review for Victoria's State Emergency Service in December 2007, obtained by The Australian Newspaper, reveals that the technology to bombard mobile and fixed phones with danger messages had been trialled successfully for the agency.

While the test run of Telstra's Community Information and Warning System was for flooding, the Victorian SES found it would work "for all types of hazard", including bushfire. Despite this, the system was not introduced because the Howard government and the states bickered over the expense.

This week on TTR
Dr Ron talks to Alan Eade, Chief Professional Officer, and Chief Paramedic, for St John Ambulance Australia about his organizations perspective of the events of last week.

Kit Webster from RMIT is a new media artist based. He’s holding an exhibition this week entitled Dataflux  that’s based around the fusion of art and technology.

We’ll also take a look at the role twitter could have played with the Victorian bushfires, and Adam Turner lets us in on a new approach by one of Australia’s commercial television networks promoting peer to peer file sharing of content of all things. Yes you did hear me right – they’re encouraging it!

On Saturday February 7 Victoria recorded it’s hottest day on record with temperatures in the Melbourne CBD climbing to 46.2 degrees Celsius or 115 on the old scale.

Not since the Ash Wednesday fires on February 16 1983 has South Eastern Australia seen anything like it. Then more than 180 fires fanned by winds of up to 110 km per hour caused widespread destruction across the state and taking the lives of 47 people. The largest fires generated their own weather systems and thunderstorms, showing up on the bureau of meteorology’s weather radar as huge smoke drifts.

VICTORIAN Premier John Brumby has described the ferocious bushfires that killed many people, injured many more and ravaged much of the state today as "the worst day in our history".

In addition to the human toll, technology around the state also took a hammering. Demand on the CFA website as well as the Department of Sustainability and Environment website virtually ground the information sites to a halt. Users on the DSE site were asked, due to unprecedented demand on the website that people who do not need to access this information for reasons of personal safety, please refrain from doing so.

774 ABC Melbourne set up several web sites to deal with the fires in an effort to remove some of the load from the government sites.

Even the Vicroads web server was not immune. With nearly all the major roads closed in the central and eastern parts of the state, requests for road closure information led the site to crash with an upgrade message being displayed to many users.

Telephony in the area has been hit hard as well with the destruction of many mobile base stations as well as telephone exchanges. The Taggerty Telephone Exchange was one such exchange destroyed by fire resulting in landline phones not working to the south of Taggerty. The mobile phone network also experienced high demand with callers failing to initiate a calls and excessive call drops.

Telstra today announced a relief package for its residential and small business customers in Victoria who have been forced from their homes or whose phone services have been affected by the bush fires.
Under the package Telstra is offering its affected customers free call diversion from their fixed line to another fixed or mobile service of their choice and mobile calls charged at fixed line rates, in accordance with their selected HomeLine® or BusinessLine® plan, for local and STD® calls made on their mobile service, in situations where Telstra mobile customers have been evacuated from their homes or who have lost their service due to the fires.

This week on TTR
Australians have no problems with pirated software?
The US again delays the Switch to Digital TV to June 12
Google launch Latitude, yet another social mapping program
And we take a fresh look at a new friend, Twitter

Google Dilemmas with Malware and Deer, Apple TV, National Broadband Network, Telstra and Sol, Bluray, Freeview and more...

February 2 , 2009

For our first show back for 2009, we’ll be taking a look at the news and events that have caught our attention since Christmas. The Global Financial Crisis is playing havoc with the worlds suppliers of technology, both goods and services. No one seems to escaped the downturn. With companies like Sony, Microsoft, and ebay all reeling in the downturn, what’s going to happen next? How will the GFC affect us at home and what of jobs?

In other news, the Federal government is scheduled to announce who gets to build Australia’s controversial National Broadband Network. The on again off again internet filtering tests are back on, maybe. As we prepare for the first show of 2009, news has surfaced overnight that the search has officially begun to replace Telstra's globetrotting chief executive, Sol Trujillo, fueling speculation the American could return to his homeland before his fourth anniversary in the job on July 1.

Mr Trujillo, who was in Davos, Switzerland last week for the World Economic Forum, did not reject speculation that he could be planning to leave after the company's board appointed the executive recruitment firm Egon Zehnder International to search for his replacement.

So as we embrace 2009, stick with us for what will be an entertaining and informative take on technology that affects as all.

This week on TTR
Sony hits rock bottom
An ISP who disconnects uses suspected of breaching copyright
Adam sheds some light on freeview and
Bluray prices fall as the medium gains momentum

Tech Talk Radio Summer Series 2008/9 Episode 8 of 8.
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Tech Talk Radio Summer Series 2008/9 Episode 7 of 8.
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Tech Talk Radio Summer Series 2008/9 Episode 6 of 8.
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Tech Talk Radio Summer Series 2008/9 Episode 5 of 8.
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