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.
linux.conf.au 2007 meets demand by extending the official conference period to a full week, and broadening the scope and number of community organised streams, called “miniconfs”.
“linux.conf.au is regarded as one of the world’s best events for Linux and Open Source developers – this year, we have received more responses to our Call for Participation than ever before”, says Jeff Waugh, lead organiser, “Our audience demands quality and diversity, so for 2007, we are extending the main conference period to six days, promoting our much-loved miniconfs and adding fresh ideas such as Open Day.”
Over two hundred and fifty submissions were received for talks, tutorials, and miniconfs. The linux.conf.au 2007 programme will run over six days, with four keynote speakers, four complete days of miniconfs and presentations, an Open Day to present FLOSS achievements to families, students and the general public and our traditional recipe of fantastic evening events for conference attendees to catch up and unwind.
“Miniconfs are community organised streams, focusing on particular projects or interest groups in the Open Source world. Next year, we will host more than ever before, with thirteen events over two days”, said James Purser, miniconf chair and Linux Australia committee member. “Our attendees will be treated to an eclectic mix of old favourites such as Debian and Education,
and brand new streams such as LinuxChix and Open Source in the computer game and film industries.”
linux.conf.au 2007 participants can look forward to the following topics:
* Debian: Ever present and always popular, the Debian miniconf focuses on
the world’s largest community developed operating system.
* Education: For educators and technologists interested in the use of Open
Source in education.
* Embedded: A showcase of amazing devices with Linux at their heart, and a
fine opportunity to share and learn about this fast-growing topic.
* Gaming: Bringing game developers together to promote Open Source games,
and Open Source in game development.
* GNOME.conf.au: A meeting of the minds for developers and users of GNOME,
a desktop environment and developer platform.
* Movies: Covering the increasing uptake of Open Source solutions in film
production, in imaging and infrastructure.
* MySQL: Presenting practical applications of MySQL and related software,
through tutorials and developer discussion.
* OpenOffice.org: Case studies, workshops, demonstrations and tutorials
about the FLOSS world’s answer to Microsoft Office.
* PostgreSQL: Introductory and advanced topics for database administrators
working with PostgreSQL and developers keen to learn about the code.
* Research: Presentation of papers, case studies and workshops relating to
Open Source in Australian research.
* LinuxChix: Celebrating achievements in the Free Software world by women,
and presenting some of their experiences.
* Kernel: Lots of kernel developers getting together to teach and perform
their black arts. Presentations will range from introductory to scary.
* Virtualisation: A huge topic in the Open Source world over the last year
or two, this will cover virtualisation projects, problems and solutions.
(My first ever direct copy of a press release!).
For the record, I was going to submit a proposal for a speech, but decided against it on the grounds that I’m not sure that I’m even going to be able to make it to Sydney for LCA.
It just keeps getting worse for the embattled Department of Immigration…this time they’ve managed to delete just over 4,900 records of Australian citizens currently travelling overseas, effectively locking them out of the country until the data can be manually re-entered from paper.
Sources inside the Department of Immigration have informed me (and subsequently verified) that the records were lost late last week during routine staff training. Staff were being trained in the use of a system for managing records of Australians who are currently overseas (and possibly others), and were using dummy records for training. Near the end of the day, on a day late last week, the Immigration official supervising the training went home, leaving a mostly trained trainer in charge. Sometime around 5:10pm one of the trainees entered some data incorrectly and asked the trainer for assistance, the trainer advised them to press the delete key, the trainee subsequently queried this advice by asking “are you sure?”, to which the trainer said “yes, press the delete key”.
According to sources, when the delete key is pressed on this system it does not ask for confirmation, and pops up a message when it has completed the task. On this occasion it is believed that the cursor was in the wrong location because the system whirred away for a little while before popping up a message stating that it had successfully deleted 4900 or so records…unfortunately very few of those were dummy records, and most of them were real records, and without them, people in those records are unable to re-enter the country.
“What about backups?” I hear you ask…this system doesn’t have them…apparently it is a deterrent to people playing around with the system…more like a very tempting chaos creator if you ask me.
Immigration are working on restoring the deleted data from other systems and from paper at the moment, no disciplinary action is likely as this was a genuine accident, but procedures are being reviewed.
It is unknown how many people have been affected as they attempted to re-enter the country.
I just went to login to Gmail and noticed that they have now opened Gmail signup to the public…the address to signup for a gmail account is http://mail.google.com/mail/signup or you can just go to gmail.com and click the signup link.
Here are some screenshots (click to enlarge).
Update 11/08/2006 3:42pm: Based on the feedback I’m getting, it looks like Google are rolling out this signup page on a limited basis…Australia seems to be ahead of most of the rest of the world in that regard. It could be just to be a tease, but it is probably to stop an avalanche of automated signup robots trying to get Gmail accounts.
Also, I’m definetly on the slashdot “auto-reject” list for story submissions…every story I’ve submitted in the last couple months has been rejected within five minutes, and I know from previous experience that it takes many hours for the editors to get around to each submission, looks like they’ve got a scheduled job every 5-10 minutes to reject submissions from a certain list of people. I suppose I shouldn’t have written that submission criticising slashdot editors…but not allowing submissions from me is my loss, and just proves that they are lunatics.
The last week has been a busy one for Technorati from my “outsider’s point of view”. Firstly, Technorati are now indexing this blog properly again (it only took about 100 days and two emails), but I forgive them because it all works now, and is even indexing scheduled posts after they appear, which sounds like they’ve either setup periodic RSS feed checking, or are taking notice of post timestamp (if that gets sent in the “ping” when I click “Publish”).
The other day (July 20 to be precise), I received the following email from Janice Myint from Technorati Support
Hello Samuel,
Please accept my sincerest apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We’ve been experiencing a backlog in support and
are working hard to address everyone. I’ve taken a look at the issue regarding picking up your pings for
“samuelgordonstewart.com”. After making a small adjustment, I’ve sent our spiders to revisit your page and your blog has been
indexed with your most recent posts.
Everything now appears to be working as it should, but please let us know if you experience any problems in the future. Do
not hesitate to contact us if you have any other questions. We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for using
Technorati!
Best Regards,
Janice Myint
Customer Support Specialist
Technorati
I’m very pleased about this, and I even replied to Janice’s email to express that sentiment.
Dear Janice,
Thanks for fixing that, I really appreciate you taking the time and effort to do so. I hope you get through the backlog of support tickets soon.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
The other thing that appears to have been keeping the staff at Technorati busy is a redesign of their website and an upgrade of their backend software, as a means of celebrating their third birthday (happy birthday by the way).
The new site is much easier on the eyes, faster, and much easier to use and navigate. Quite a bit of work appears to have gone in to it, and it looks like that effort has paid off.
All in all, a busy and redeeming week for a company I had almost given up hope on.
I was having a little sticky beak in the Firefox help files for no particular reason when I encountered something which made stop and send an email off to the Security Now! podcast.
Hi Steve and Leo,
I was just poking around in Mozilla Firefox and noticed something in the “Help for Internet Exploer Users” section:
“About Your IE Favorites and Settings
When you first install Firefox, it will import your existing Internet Explorer settings, including your Favorites, cookies, stored passwords, and a variety of other data. This saves you time customizing Firefox to fit your needs.”
The important part of that is that Firefox imports IE’s stored passwords, which raises a question of security with those passwords being on my hard drive.
I’m not concerned about other people using my computer and using my stored passwords as I don’t store super-sensitive passwords, but if somebody were to store a password of some importance, how easy would it be for some malware to access those passwords? The innocuous Firefox can do it, what’s stopping malware from doing it?
By the way, if you read this on SN52, congratulations on one year of Security Now!
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra, Australia
Admittedly I could, with a few minutes, find out the answer for myself, but I’m sure I’m not the only one to ever wonder about this, and somehow I think it would be a perfect question for the Security Now! podcast, and an answer on there would benefit many more people than an answer here (Security Now! has about 100,000 listeners (source)). None the less, I will get an answer on here soon. I’ll wait and see if Steve and Leo discuss this, and if so I’ll include the transcript. If not I’ll just go and do some reasearch for myself.
