It amazes me how long this story has taken to reach fruition. I was first alerted to this story at the end of February by a former work colleague, however I wasn’t sure of my own non-disclosure obligations from when I worked for Telstra through a casual employment agency last year. So, rather than making a public announcement at the time, I filled a few local media people in on the details. Nothing much happened on this story for a while so I didn’t continue to pursue it.
Yesterday the story rocketed back in to life when Telstra announced that they are going to close 13 call centres across the country. (Telstra press release) (Article on news.com.au)
Details of what is actually happening in Canberra are scarce, but 2CC news are reporting that Telstra are claiming 35 jobs will be lost in Canberra. The reality of it is that 75-80 jobs will be lost in Canberra as Telstra are only counting permanent staff, not the staff employed on a casual basis by third parties, which in Canberra means the staff employed by Julia Ross Hot.
Telstra have decided that they don’t want any call centres with less than 200 employees, unfortunately the Canberra Broadband Helpdesk, one of three in the country, and one of two to be closed, employs about 75 people.
This is not Bigpond support which is contracted out to Teletech, but instead is the wholesale line fault division. The basic role of these staff is to log faults reported by ISPs and schedule technicians to attend to and fix the problems, these staff also run tests for technicians, allocate new resources (exchange ports etc) to fix problems, and escalate issues which are more complex and require phone lines or other equipment to be replaced.
The three call centres often struggle under the load as it is, there is no way known that Brisbane can handle the load, which means problems are going to take longer to fix as it will take longer for appointments to be arranged, technicians will spend more time on hold waiting for tests (therefore getting through less jobs each day…and getting paid less now that most of them are contractors paid on a per-job basis), and followups will be almost non-existent.
If you think the need for these call centres is offset by the number of people who are now on DSLAMs (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexers) owned and operated by ISPs other than Telstra, think again. The only thing this does is change who maintains the exchange equipment…there is still a big heap of copper wire owned and operated by Telstra, and this tends to have more issues than exchange equipment. The impact of ISPs running their own DSLAMs on the workloads of these call centres is minimal, although it does increase the buck-passing a bit.
Conveniently for Telstra, the closures tie in with an asset consolidation they are in the middle of. For Canberra, this means the two buildings they own on Northbourne Avenue (the one with their logo, and the little one next door) will be sold. The staff who aren’t losing their jobs will be moving to a new building in Symonston before the end of the year.
The information I have is that, if probed too deeply about the local job cuts, Telstra will unfairly blame the ACT government. Apparently they were in “negotiations” with the government earlier this year for office space in Civic (a commodity the government don’t have at their disposal), in exchange for a guarantee about the number of staff Telstra would employ. The negotiations, which were never really serious, went nowhere, but telstra may use the ACT Government as a scapegoat if the pressure gets a bit too much for them locally.
Incidentally, if you have noticed a thing that looks a bit like a phone tower on the roof of Telstra’s taller building in Dickson, don’t be too concerned about it. Telstra’s actual phone tower is further down Antill Street, at the back of the swimming pool carpark, roughly between the tennis courts, putt putt golf centre, and storm water drain. The thing on the Telstra building’s roof has nothing to do with mobile phones.
Yes that’s right, the present I am giving you on my birthday is Gravity…no not the stuff that keeps you on the planet (well, most of you), a computer game I created in 2004 called Gravity. I actually created another game of the same name in 2003, but the 2004 version is a completely different game, the only thing it has in common with the original is a few graphics and the gravity calculations.
The basic premise of the game is simple, you are in a stationary space ship and you are trying to shoot a stationary target, however there are three planets and three bumpers in the way which you have to deal with. Also to make it harder, there is a barrier right in front of you, in the direction of your target, making it impossible for you to just directly shoot at the target.
The scoring is a bit complex, but it runs as follows:
Target Hit…………………………………+100 Points
Bumper hit…………………………………..+5 Points
Planet hit………………………………….-10 Points
Out-of-bounds……………………………….-10 Points
Blowing yourself up…………………………-100 Points
You also gain one point for every second that you have an active shot.
There is also a bonus point system for long shots, the longer the shot the more bonus points. The bonus points are awarded when the shot has gone for the specified length of time, eg. If a shot goes for 39 seconds you will get bonus points at 15 seconds and at 30 seconds.
15 Seconds…………………………………..25 Points
30 Seconds…………………………………..50 Points
45 Seconds………………………………….100 Points
60 Seconds………………………………….200 Points
90 Seconds………………………………….400 Points
120 Seconds…………………………………800 Points
180 Seconds………………………………..1600 Points
240 Seconds………………………………..3200 Points
Also important are the keys to make the game work
Rotate left…………………………………left arrow
Rotate right……………………………….right arrow
Increase shot speed……………………………up arrow
Lower shot speed…………………………….down arrow
Shoot……………………………………….space bar
Toggle full screen mode……………………………..F4
Turn music on/off…………………………………..F5
End game early (takes you to the results screen)………F12
Your projectile can disappear off screen for a while at times, the actual edge of the game is a fair distance off screen so that if your projectile is going to come back, it has enough room to turn around. You will hear a click and see the shot light appear again if your projectile goes out of bounds.
The top left and top right corners of the screen provide useful information. The top left side displays your score, the speed of your next shot, and also if you currently have an active shot or not. The light will be light blue when you can take a shot, and dark blue when you already have an active shot.
The top right of screen displays the amount of time left in the game, the time your current shot has been going for, and your longest shot for the game.
I was going to correct a few typos in the documentation and change some of the music for this public release, but it looks like I’ve lost the source files (or just can’t find where I backed them up). Incidentally, there are two batch files included with the game to enable printing, unfortunately at the time the only way to get printing to work in the programming environment I used for this game was to create a bitmap of the game window and get MS Paint to print it…which was further complicated by the lack of the programming environment to understand basic Windows paths like “%temp%” due to the use of percentage signs. This forced me to make the batch files to create (and remove) a virtual drive pointing at %temp%
There is no installation needed, but you will need to extract all three files from the zip file. The game should work without the batch files, although it certainly won’t print, and will probably quit suddenly if you try to get it to print.
It took the better part of a two week school holiday to write this game, and the rest of that two weeks to get the printing to work and fix bugs as they were discovered.
Gravity should run under Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and XP, and generally works with a few font issues under WINE. It is untested on Windows NT 4.0, and will not work on earlier versions of Windows. I retain copyright on this game, however you are free to distribute it. If I ever do find the source files I will post them as well.
Last week their anti-virus product came last in a comparison of anti-virus products and failed to achieve accreditation, before that it wasn’t protecting Windows Vista users properly, this week it’s deleting entire mailboxes!
Microsoft has admitted that its Live OneCare security suite has been accidentally deleting some users’ Outlook and Outlook Express e-mails.
According to postings on Microsoft’s OneCare forum, erasures have been caused when the antivirus program finds a virus in an e-mail attachment. Instead of then quarantining that single e-mail, users have reported that entire .pst or .dbx files — the personal folder where non-Exchange Server users’ messages and other details are kept — have been quarantined or, in some cases, even deleted.
One user commented on the forum: “Is there a chance to recover it? If not, OneCare will have done more damage than any virus in my 30 years of active computing.” Forum postings indicate, however, that recovery is possible in some cases, where the .pst or .dbx file is still available in OneCare’s quarantine facility.
Stephen Boots, a forum administrator, commented that he was “very unhappy about this problem as it was reported over a year ago and fixed in the 1.0 release”, adding: “It never appeared throughout the beta, but suddenly appeared when 1.5 was released”.
In a statement reported on Computerworld, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the company was “working to address an issue where the antimalware engine for OneCare is erroneously quarantining Outlook .pst files or Outlook Express .dbx files, when the .pst file or .dbx file contains an infected attachment”. The spokesperson added that a fix would be included in the next OneCare update, which is due on 13 March.
The update might be due out tomorrow, and maybe that will fix the problem, but how exactly did they manage to reintroduce that bug, months after getting rid of it?
More importantly, Microsoft have admitted that OneCare deletes Outlook and Outlook Express mailboxes, but what about other mail clients (Mozilla Thunderbird (my recommended email client) and Eudora for example) that also have to store emails somewhere…if OneCare is deleting the mailboxes of Outlook, surely it can delete the mailboxes of competitors’ email clients, but will Microsoft’s patch prevent that?
This, according to Windows Media Player is the track listing of Paul McCartney’s “All The Best” album.
The actual track listing is as follows:
1. Jet
2. Band On The Run
3. Coming Up
4. Ebony And Ivory
5. Listen To What The Man Said
6. No More Lonely Nights
7. Silly Love Songs
8. Let ‘Em In
9. C Moon
10. Pipes Of Peace
11. Live And Let Die
12. Another Day
13. Once Upon A Long Ago
14. Say Say Say
15. My Love
16. We All Stand Together
17. Mull Of Kintyre
It got the picture and album right, but the rest…would “oops” be the right description?
The National Library of Australia announced that it has entered into a contract with Apex Publishing to support a major newspaper digitisation program which will commence later this year.
The Library will use Apex’s services to build a database covering the period 1803 to 1954 using one major newspaper from each state and territory. From early 2008 the Library expects to offer a new online service to enable full text searching of these newspapers and viewing of the content free of charge.
Sounds remarkably similar, but much less controversial than Google Books.
IDR99940 CANBERRA RADAR IS U/S UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. ANY INCONVENIENCE IS REGRETTED. 17/1135Z
The good news is that it is only the web interface for it which is offline, the radar itself is working perfectly, and feeding images to the Weatherzone website. The radar image on the Canberra weather screen (the weather reports on the right of screen take you there) is quite abysmal, but their dedicated radar page is quite good…just turn on borders and it all makes sense. One small pointer though, their idea of “Canberra” is the airport, not the city. If you turn on roads, the city is located roughly at the intersection of the purple road leading west from the airport, and the thick purple road heading north/south.
Update 3:58pm: Upon further investigation, it looks like the Weatherzone site is just using the last data it had available, and that is from 8:20pm last night. Looks like the Sydney radar is about the best we have available, and its coverage of this area isn’t all that good. It can pick up rain in Canberra, but it can’t see it coming. End Update
Update 4:09pm: The Wagga Wagga radar has a pretty good view, but the New South Wales composite radar is arguably the best view. The combination of the Sydney, Wagga Wagga and any other radar that just happens to pick up Canberra on the outskirts of its view seems to handle the job that the Canberra radar did. End Update
Before Google, there were a number of main search engines…everyone had their favourite, and they all painted a very different picture of the Internet. At one stage my favourite search engine was MetaCrawler, which seemed to do a good job of making sense of the all the different results from the different search engines.
Times have changed, and it seems that these days there are three dominant search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN (they accounted for 94.2% of all search engine referrals to this website last year). I rarely use anything but Google now, and whilst I think that overall it is a very good search engine, there are times when it would be nice to have a human with more knowledge than me of the subject I’m searching for, helping me to find what it is that I’m looking for.
This isn’t a new concept, many search engines have tried it. Ask Jeeves was an attempt at automating it…ask a question in plain English and get an answer…well maybe…didn’t quite work. Google Answers took the human approach, ask a question and set a price for an “expert” to answer it, it worked, except for the fact that most people don’t like paying to search and didn’t bother to use it.
Cha Cha is a relatively new search engine which seems to take the best of both worlds, featuring both the standard search engine, and human “guides” for the tougher searches. The standard Cha Cha search engine is pretty good, the interface isn’t as cluttered as some parts of Google have become, and with Web, News, Images, Video and Audio, it has about all you could really ask for. There are two minor things that bother me about Cha Cha’s standard search though, one being that the only way to start a search is with a web search…you can’t instantly access News, Images, Video and Audio, you can only get to them after starting a search. My second gripe is that the image search wastes a heap of space by only showing the thumbnails down the left hand side of the page, it would be much more efficient if it had a page full of thumbnails.
Cha Cha’s guided search is primarily intended for more difficult searches, where you might struggle to find an answer on your own. It’s completely free to search with a guide, and each guide apparently has a set of broad speciality subjects.
I decided to test Cha Cha’s abilities by searching for some obscure information, the information being the name of the bar that John Kerr and listeners attended before having lunch on his recent Terrigal outing. This is information that I did not place on this website in textual form, it was only in this image and its associated thumbnail. Only having it in an image was going to make it a bit harder to find and require a different set of keywords…searching for the bar itself would be hopeless.
So I tried typing my question “What is the name of the bar where John Kerr and listeners had drinks before lunch in Terrigal?” in plain English into Cha Cha’s normal search engine.
(Click to enlarge)
Something about a “John Wesley”, a couple things about Terrigal, and something about listener numbers…so, off to the guide I trotted. After a few moments I was presented with “Jay W.” as a guide.
(Click to enlarge)
After a couple minutes Jay W. presented me with a result. It was a page which contained a lot of references to John Kerr’s Terrigal lunch, and I had to click through to the second page to find the name of the bar (for the record, it was the “Lord Ashley Bar”), but none the less, Jay W. had found the obscure information.
(Click to enlarge)
I was more than happy to rate Jay W. with a “Great” rating.
(Click to enlarge)
(Click to view at original resolution)
I think Cha Cha could very easily be the next big search engine…whether or not it will take top spot from Google is another matter, but I think it will join Google, Yahoo and MSN as a big search engine, and will probably be a favourite amongst students who need a bit of help with their assignments.
The iPhone started off as an exciting announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, but has since turned into a rather large mess.
When Apple announced the iPhone, many people started to wonder what deals they had struck to use the “iPhone” name, and it soon became clear that Apple hadn’t finalised any agreements with Cisco over the use of the name, and Cisco were quick to sue them for trademark infringement.
Also part of Jobs’ announcement was that the iPhone runs Apple’s Mac OS X operating system, this led to a lot of speculation about whether or not third party applications would be allowed on the iPhone. Steve Jobs announced that third party applications would not be allowed on the iPhone, apparently for stability reasons, which seems just a tad odd for something running what appears to be a modified version of OS X.
Cisco then tried to clarify their lawsuit, apparently they wanted to have Cisco products and the iPhone interoperate, but just as they were making the clarification, their trademark started to look a bit shaky.
Things were starting to look up for Apple, until the processor used in the iPhone came to light…a Samsung ARM core processor. Mac OS X is based on an open source BSD UNIX variant named “Darwin”, but it only runs on Intel x86 and IBM PowerPC platforms, and if Apple were to write a version for Samsung ARM, they would have to release the source code, which they haven’t done, and according to a Cingular Mobile rep, they won’t be doing. So in essence, it’s not running Darwin, and therefore not running OS X. Apple can call it OS X, but it’s not even remotely related to the OS X you would find on a “normal” computer.
With all of the kerfuffle so far, is it any wonder that Apple didn’t make any other big announcements (Apple TV isn’t a particular big or expected announcement)…they would have been lost in the iPhone Jigsaw Puzzle.
As many of you would already know, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced the iPhone, a phone/iPod/web browser/email client/more device.
I, personally, am one of the staunchest believers in phones which are phones, nothing more, nothing less. The addition of text messaging is handy as an occasional add-on tool for a phone, but other than that, I’m simply not interested…I don’t want cameras or other additions to phones.
That was until yesterday, the iPhone changed that, it is the first device to ever alter my thinking on the subject, it is the first mobile device which, in my opinion, handles the integration of these devices properly, and in a way which is easy, convenient and intuitive to use.
Admittedly the device is about a year away in this country, but when it arrives, it will be the first phone I’ve ever been slightly interested in which does more than calls and text messaging, and it will be the first time I’m interested in an iPod.
I get the impression that competing mobile phone vendors, and to a lesser extent competing MP3 player manufacturers, are holding emergency board meetings around about now.
On another Apple note, Microsoft’s Windows Vista is due out shortly for consumers, Apple’s next Mac OS X, named “Leopard”, is likely out later this year…somehow I think this new iPhone and the next OS X will make Windows a much much harder sell.
There seems to be quite a lot of fuss in certain web circles at the moment about Google’s custom search which allows you to make a search engine which searches only certain websites…a perfect idea for theme based searches.
It’s actually rather amusing that Rollyo has been doing the same thing with Yahoo powering it for quite some time. Rollyo seems to have built up a community of sorts, and is aimed more at personal users than website owners, although it certainly is useful for website owners. Google’s offering has less personal features (such as the ability to create a Firefox search bar search engine), but does have the advantage of offering website owners a cut of the ad revenue through their Adsense program…Rollyo has a similar “partners program”, but isn’t as easy to setup as Google’s offering.
Rollyo is limited to 25 websites per search engine, which probably doesn’t matter for most topics, but is certainly an annoying limitation for others.
Overall I think Rollyo is the more polished product at this stage, with Google’s offering feeling like a mere extension of their “search one site” service. There is more than enough room for both at the moment, but if and when Google decide to come up with the features Rollyo already has…then Rollyo will probably be squeezed out. Actually, that could be the first time in a while that Google have squeezed someone out rather than buying them.
Firefox 2.0, the next version of Mozilla Firefox has officially been released. I assume that the automated Firefox Update system should prompt Firefox 1.5.x users to upgrade over the next few days, although it currently seems to be unaware of the update.
For those who don’t want to wait (like me), Firefox can be downloaded from Mozilla.com.
I’ll leave the question of “what’s new?” to the Mozilla Press Release
What’s New in Firefox 2
Improvements to the user interface, security tools and options for customization, combine to deliver a rich, engaging, safer and more productive Web browsing experience for all.
Tabbed browsing. Firefox popularized tabbed browsing, enabling multiple Web sites to be viewed as separate tabs contained within a single browser window, and improving people’s efficiency by helping them better organize their desktops. In Firefox 2, tabbed browsing has been further improved with the addition of individual close buttons on each tab, enhanced tab navigation features, and a session restore system that automatically restores previously-open windows and tabs when a new browsing session is started.
Spell checking. Modern Web sites are increasingly complex with the rollout of new, rich Internet applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets and blogging tools. Inline spell checking in Firefox 2 automatically checks for spelling errors and suggests corrections as users interact with Web sites, bringing a common desktop feature to the Web.
Search. Search is one of the most frequently used features of the Web. With Firefox 2, Mozilla improves the browser’s integrated search capabilities, making it even easier for users to find the information they are looking for. The new Search Suggestions feature dynamically updates a drop-down list of suggested search terms as users enter text into the search bar for Google, Yahoo! or Answers.com search engines.
Web feeds. Firefox users can now take better advantage of the frequently updated content offered by Web sites, with increased options for handling Web feeds. Users now see a preview of the content being offered and are given the option to subscribe to a feed as a Live Bookmark, using a Web service such as Bloglines, My Yahoo!, or Google Reader, or with a desktop application.
Identity theft protection. In addition to its award-winning safeguards for blocking drive-by installation of spyware and unwanted pop-up windows, Firefox 2 helps protect users from identity theft by quickly informing them when they surf to a questionable Web site. To protect users’ privacy, Phishing Protection is active by default with a local blacklist that updates hourly, rather than sending information to an external online service. An enhanced mode is available where users may optionally elect to have Firefox check the validity of Web sites with a third-party Web service, such as Google, prior to loading the site. Phishing Protection provides warnings, advice and guidance when Firefox encounters a Web site that appears to be fraudulent or malicious.
Proven security model. Mozilla’s open and transparent community-driven security model helps ensure Firefox provides the safest possible online experience. Thousands of security experts and technical contributors from around the world examine and analyze the Firefox source code, uncover potential threats and vulnerabilities, and work together to quickly identify and address emerging threats. This open, distributed, innovative approach to security puts people’s interests first and delivers the safest Web experience possible.
Customization. No other browser can be customized like Firefox 2. With thousands of add-ons that enhance the browser’s functionality and features, Firefox lets users personalize their Web browsers to fit their interests and style.
For more information on Mozilla Firefox 2 and how it delivers an easier, faster and safer online experience, visit www.mozilla.com/firefox/features.html.
Mozilla Firefox 2 is available now as a free download from www.getfirefox.com.
Oh, and Microsoft released Internet Exploder 7 rather recently…hardly worth a mention really!
Yesterday at work I was installing a network printer on two computers, and decided to use the same peice of paper for the test page from each computer, the effect was quite interesting.
On the weekend I reported that Google were in talks to buy YouTube, and today I can happily say that Google have bought YouTube for USD$1.65 Billion (a bit over AUD$ 2 Billion).
Many industry experts said that Google would never buy YouTube because of the sheer volume of copyright infringing videos on there, but as I pointed out on the weekend (and again on the John Stanley afternoon show on 2CC and 2UE today) Google are very well placed to handle these copyright concerns as they already have their own competing video service and even a highly controversial book scanning program.
So, where to from here for Google Video and YouTube? I would expect a merger over the coming months, with Google hopefully implementing some of the good features of YouTube in the merged service, and not just moving all the videos over. There will be a no-signup period for a couple weeks when Google move YouTube over to Google Accounts, muchy like what happened when they bought Writely…and ultimately Google will ensure the success and profit of the merged video service by expanding their video sales syetem to all countries, not just the US.
I’m quite happy about this, because I no longer have to upload videos to both services on the fear that one will fold, and I can be almost 100% certain that these videos will be there forever more.
Update 10/October/2006 @ 6:46pm: Video message from YouTube’s former owners:
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I’ve stripped out the links, but you get the drift. It looks like “Ben” is taking the domain names of email addresses, and adding them to the body of the message, in an attempt to get website owners to pay him/her/it.
Never mind the fact that the vast majority of email addresses which are spammed (and the vast majority of email addresses for that matter) are not used by the person responsible for the maintenance and administration of the domain name in the email address, and the vast majority of people who do run websites know that search engine optimisers don’t work…they might get you listed on Google, Yahoo, MSN etc, but you need the links from real websites, not funny little search engines and directories, to increase your page ranking.
For example, do a search for pages which link to this website…I can guarantee you that this site is listed in a few hundred or more directories and little search engines, and none, or almost none of them will appear in the results.
That being said, somebody, somewhere, will follow the link and enter their credit card details, under the false impression that, this will somehow bring in more traffic (or who knows what else they might think it will do)…and then they can wait for all the nice unknown credit card charges to appear…endless fun can be had in spam!
I just noticed on AAP that Google are in talks to buy YouTube for about USD$1.6 Billion.
Previously analysts have said that only a fool would buy YouTube, because of the large amount of potential lawsuits over copyright infringements…however Google have worked out a way to sell some videos on Google Video (Leo Laporte’s “Call For Help” sells for 99 US cents per episode on Google Video) and have obviously dealt with the same legal issues as YouTube, so they are probably the right people to buy YouTube.
I just hope Google utilise the YouTube flash player as a replacement for their own, and learn a thing or two about ease of use from YouTube’s uploader interface.
