Oct 10 2006
Internet Explorer 7 is just about at RTM and will be delivered to all Windows users as a high-priority, automatic update this month. What does this mean to you? Well, whether you like it or not, shortly you too will be running IE7 if you aren’t already.
Oct 10 2006
When will the music industry learn? Read this post from the Techdirt website to see how ridiculous American law is…
Someone who prefers to remain anonymous sent in the following link, highlighting a dispute in an Oregon restaurant that used to allow live bands to play. It turns out that, recently, one local band played three cover songs from the 1970’s. That night, there happened to be a rep from the American Society of Musicians and Publishers in attendance, who noted down the three cover songs (and the fact that the restaurant had not paid a license for them) and filed a federal lawsuit against the owner.
Source: Enjoying Live Music Is Expensive
Originally published on Tue, 10 Oct 2006 02:35:54 GMT by Mike
Sep 29 2006
I’ve been meaning to blog about this for the last couple of weeks – Deb and I went to see “An Inconvenient Truth” (IMDB link) at the Penthouse Cinema in Brooklyn. The movie was Deb’s choice but I was so glad that I saw it.
It’s a really important film that everyone should go to see, it will really open your eyes. It’s a documentary that revolves around Al Gore’s campaign to highlight the serious issues with global warming. The film cuts between a slideshow that Al Gore is presenting and clips of him on the road, traveling around the word spreading his message.
The film hits home hard and Al’s presentation skills really gets the message across well. You’ll leave the cinema either feeling depressed or inspired – but either way you’ll know that changes need to happen. Here are a couple of environment-friendly links that I’ve come across in my quest to help out…
Personal Kyoto – this is a service only applicable to New York residents at the moment, but it’s so simple it should be relevant worldwide. You register with the site and give it your local electricity account number and they produce a chart showing your electricity usage and how it relates to the standards implied by the Kyoto Protocol. The idea is that you calculate what you need to do reduce your emissions in line with what the Kyoto Protocol would require.
Healthy Homes Check Up – more relevant to people in New Zealand, this is a series of questions designed to determine how energy efficient your home is. It then provides options for improvements, along with how much the improvements cost and what the payback period is.
What are you doing to help..?
Sep 26 2006
“The main goal of User Account Control is to reduce the exposure and attack surface of the operating system by requiring that all users run in standard user mode…”
It all sounds good, but there are two fundamental flaws with the way it has been implemented in Vista.
Sep 09 2006
UPDATE: Craig finally got the matter resolved with Flight Centre and is happy with the results. Read more here for details.
The NZ blogosphere may not be as powerful as in America or Europe, but there’s a good number of people blogging about the story of Craig being ripped off by Flight Centre (and then being called a liar just to add insult to the injury!) There’s even a Digg article here: Flight Centre rips off its customers
In brief, Craig was told over the phone that some flight tickets he was looking to purchase had an indefinite return date. He didn’t think that sounded right, so he double-checked and the staff at Flight Centre confirmed it to be true. So he bought the tickets only to find out (too late) that they expired after a year. Now Flight Centre are denying that they told him the tickets were indefinite and now also accusing him of lying!
Hopefully people will read Craig’s story and make sure they have written confirmation of the details before paying for tickets. And perhaps if you read the story you may also consider not dealing with Flight Centre in the first place, as their customer service (full details in the original blog post) have been appalling!
I booked my tickets for my recent trip to London with Zuji and have nothing but praise for them.
Tags: flight+centre, flight+center, wildimages, nz, blogs, blogospher, rip-off
Sep 06 2006
For the first half of Rockstar Supernova, I was convinced that Dilana was going to win and that there was no else who even came close to her. BUT – I think Toby has really been rocking it lately and his performance tonight was the best of the night! He had the whole crowd singing along to his original song by the second verse – that’s impressive.
Dilana screwed up by bagging on her fellow contestants, but I thought that she had redeemed herself and was still in the game. Her recent performances, though, have been good but not great, and I thought that her original was average. So I can’t see her going all the way any more.
Tags: rockstar, supernova, tv, dilana, toby-rand, music, rock
Sep 04 2006
Breaking news, and I’m trying to confirm this, but it looks like it’s a sad day for Australians. Steve Irwin died in a freak accident while diving at the Low Isles off Port Douglas. Apparently a sting ray barb punctured his chest killing him instantly.
This really is a sad day…
Aug 29 2006
Flickr decision to use Yahoo’s maps instead of the far superior maps from Google or Live Local, shows that they were obviously forced to use them by Yahoo. What do you think – should Yahoo force Flickr to make decisions based on political reasons rather than technical reasons?
Aug 25 2006
I posted this video from my vSocial account in a previous post, but I wanted to see for myself how good the quality is on the DivX site. Watch this video and then compare it to the one on this post.
Aug 25 2006
Since finding this site, it’s really got me thinking about culture in the workplace and how most companies need to make some huge changes. (it’s even made me change my voicemail greeting to a much happier sounding tone!)
Here’s a bunch of recent posts that are worth reading:
And since I’ve developed this interest in this topic, the following links were also interesting – all related to work-place culture, productivity, happiness, and other good-karma stuff.
Tags: productivity, happiness, culture, positive-sharing, business, work