30 March 2008

Yakedi! free SMS

I wrote briefly before about Yakedi! It’s a free web-based service for sending text messages to Australian mobile phones.

I’m so impressed with Yakedi! that this post is simply a blatant plug to say thanks and well done.

I read somewhere the modern human has evolved to be more dextrous with his thumb than his pointer finger, thanks to the phenomenon of text messaging. Read more »

Tags: communication, features, mobile, Technology
3 comments


26 March 2008

What’s in a name?

That’s the logo of the Federal Government’s Area Consultative Committees (ACC). Not very impressive, is it? And you couldn’t blame anyone for wanting to change it. However, at what cost should it be changed?

Regional Development Minister Anthony Albanese announced just before Easter that ACCs would be replaced by a similar organisation called Regional Development Australia (RDA). Read more »

Tags: Australia, features, opinion, politics, soapbox
0 comments


3 March 2008

Hoon problem

Western Australia has a hoon problem. It exists everywhere to some extent, I suppose, but I never encountered it in the parts of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia I lived in previously.

Hoon activity can be doing a burnout; dangerous or reckless driving; racing another vehicle, speeding, and accelerating or braking and skidding wildly.

I think it’s fair to say WA is the hoon state of Australia and Kalgoorlie-Boulder is the hoon capital. I saw some figures last year which showed there were more hoon arrests here than anywhere else. Read more »

Tags: Australia, features, justice, Kalgoorlie, motoring, opinion, police, society, Western-Australia
1 comment


29 October 2007

Newspaper novels: The truth will make you fret

There aren’t many novels about newspapers. Stories involving print journalists are far fewer than those about lawyers, soldiers and police for example.

That’s a little surprising when you consider that journalists are writers. But when you think about it, we are craftsmen while novelists are artists. We ply a trade while they follow their creative spirits. We have responsibilities, they don’t.

Three good books about newspapers come readily to mind. PG Wodehouse wrote Psmith, Journalist in 1915; Evelyn Waugh wrote Scoop in 1938 and Terry Pratchett published The Truth in 2000.

In Wodehouse’s classic, Psmith arrives in New York on a cricket tour and becomes involved with the home entertainment weekly “Cosy Moments” which he transforms into a hard-hitting investigative journal. He rides the bumps of organised crime and American politics along the way.

In Waugh’s story, scribe William Boot is mistaken by the publisher of the Daily Beast for a war correspondent. He is uprooted from writing country garden features to covering the civil war in Ishmaelia. Both novels are cleverly satirical.

Pratchett’s The Truth is a typically fantastic work from the author of the Discworld series. The hero in this case is William de Worde, who teams up with dwarfs to print the first newspaper in Ankh-Morpork.

As usual, Pratchett offers some tremendous insights into human nature. His observations of the newspaper profession are also very sharp, suggesting excellent research or personal knowledge. For instance, he offers a rare literary tribute to the unsung work of sub-editors.

I’ve just finished reading The Truth for the second time. I found the focus on hired assassins to be distracting and kept wanting the story to get back to the trials and tribulations of The Times.

There are some great one liners, like when the dwarfs make a typesetting error with the newspaper’s logo, which becomes: “The truth will make you fret”.

I related personally to the serial pest who kept coming into the office with remarkable vegetables. Anyone who has worked on a country newspaper will know there are people in most towns who like to show off their giant tomatoes or funny-shaped parsnips.

I admit it’s one of my long-term ambitions to write a satirical novel about newspapers. I started taking notes of strange but true incidents last year, like when one of my reporters disappeared while on the trail of visiting Mongolian detectives.

I have heaps of material; just need the time to write it.

Tags: Books, cricket, crime, entertainment, feature, features, law, list, nature, news, newspapers, office, police, politics, PR, war, work, world, writing
0 comments


11 November 2006

Online page creators

There are some options appearing now for people who want to create web pages online and have them hosted for free.

The first I came across was Google Page Creator. It adds another feature to the Google suite.

A more recent entry to this market is Weebly, which I think has the edge over Google’s offering.

The control panel has easy-to-use drag and drop features to add text or pictures and edit them.

I’ve tinkered around with this and can’t think of a reason to use this service myself, but it would suit people who want to have a basic hosted web site.

My two quick efforts can be seen here: Weebly and Google.

Tags: feature, features, google
0 comments


10 September 2006

New forum script

I experimented today with a new forum script called Vanilla.

My initial observations are that it’s easy to install, attractive and minimalist. The download was just 380kb. It’s not bloated or overloaded with unnecessary features. There’s an active support community and a wide range of add-ons. Word Press integration is feasible.

On the downside it’s fairly difficult to modify templates.

I don’t have a great practical need for it (like the wiki I set up) but it’s interesting to try these scripts for potential other uses.

Tags: feature, features, list, PR, wiki
0 comments


3 September 2006

Gentoo Linux

My Kanotix installation died on me last week. It was a self-inflicted fatality; suicide in other words. I went for over a month without upgrading the distro, just updating software instead.

I finally went ahead and the system shock was all too much. I had the black screen of death, but it locked on me and I couldn’t even get a command prompt. I know I could have repaired things using a live CD, but I took the opportunity instead of a new experiment.

I have read plenty of times that Gentoo is a serious Linux diehard distro with nothing user friendly for newbies and novices. Although not very computer literate in the developer sense, I’ve been using Linux now for two years and thought it was time to take the plunge. Read more »

Tags: environment, feature, features, fire, firefox, linux, management, media, office, PR, software, war, wiki, Windows, work
0 comments


1 September 2006

Internet Explorer 7

I’ve installed the latest release candidate of IE7 on my laptop.

It’s fairly impressive and has some features that are similar to Flock and Firefox. The most obvious improvement on previous versions of IE is the implementation of tabbed browsing.

It takes a while adjusting to the look and feel, which will make the transition a little difficult for typical users when it becomes the real deal.

There is supposedly better security. Anti-phishing is integrated and also feed reading.

I still prefer Flock, but this is a good challenger from Microsoft.

Tags: feature, features, fire, firefox, internet, Microsoft, PR, Windows
0 comments


9 July 2006

Flock browser

I must say that I’m very impressed with the latest version of the Flock browser. Earlier versions were a little clumsy and not much more than Firefox clones with a light blue theme, however version 0.7.1 has some outstanding features.

Proclaimed as a social browser, Flock now lives up to its name with handy features integrating content provision to blogs, delicious and flickr. New entries can be easily added through the browser, as per this article.

The tabbed browsing includes a close option (x) like Firefox BonEcho and IE7 beta, making it the first mainstream release to offer this feature.

More Firefox plugins have been made available, including my favorite Gmail Manager.

The general look and feel is also very attractive.

Tags: blog, blogs, feature, features, fire, firefox, PR
0 comments


4 February 2006

Ironing blues

It’s a well documented fact the differences between men and women go beyond the obvious features of anatomy. For instance, men have a sense of direction and an ability to park between the white lines that are painted on the road.

Women are much more competent than men when it comes to ironing. I’ve been reflecting on this lately as I rediscover the trials of being a bachelor.

Juliet will arrive in Kalgoorlie-Boulder with the kids later this month. Meanwhile I’m cooking, cleaning and fending for myself as I haven’t had to do for 15 years.

I left home when I was 19, but rather sneakily took my laundry to mum for quite a few years afterward. Read more »

Tags: feature, features, History, Kalgoorlie, Kids, life, PR, shopping, war, work, world
8 comments