stuart test blog

We’ve been tweaking the Amanzi site recently, but under the hood we’re planning a fresh new release shortly. This will tie in with the new slogan: Your virtual IT department.

This sums up nicely what we’re planning with the business – it’s effectively giving all NZ small businesses access to a high quality IT department without needing to hire their own staff to manage their systems. We’re providing a mix of onsite and hosted solutions for our customers and as we’re a small business ourself, we’ll be dog-fooding all our solutions ourselves.

So stay tuned for further updates and keep an eye on the Amanzi site: www.amanzi.co.nz

That’s right – unless you too are the proud owner of a Nokia N95, then I can absolutely say that my phone is better than yours. I bought the N95 last week and it’s by far the best phone I’ve ever owned. Check out some of the features:

• 5MP camera (with Carl Zeiss optics)
• VGA video camera @ 30fps
• GPS
• 3G and 3.5G (HSDPA)
• Wi-Fi

And there’s hundreds of apps available too. My favourite so far is the Sports Tracker app which links in with the GPS to track distances, speeds, and routes of your running/walking/cycling workouts. Check out the Nokia site to see my last ride along the Wellington ridgeline – can your phone do that?

The only person I know who may think that their phone is better than mine is Sandy with her iPhone – but it’s not even close. When the iPhone has 3G access, a GPS, and an SDK, then the iPhone will probably win, but until then I’ll definitely give up the beautiful iPhone interface for the features of the N95. And anyway I still get my Apple fix with my iPod Touch…

Been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently as we just spent a week up in Cooks Beach in the Coromandel. The weather wasn’t too good due to the effects of a tropical cyclone that drifted towards us from Fiji. But overall it was a good break and I managed to catch the monster Snapper pictured below while fishing off a kayak with a soft bait setup.

Now I’m back in the swing of things and looking to get stuck into those new years resolutions. I also plan on posting some more technical articles on some of the stuff I’ve been doing recently so sorry if that bores the non-technical readers.

I’ve finally ordered my first batch of business cards through Digital Breeze so will be dishing these out soon. I need to get the Amanzi website cleaned up too, especially now that we’ve been featured in a case study on the Xero website. Over the next few months I’ll be looking to take on a couple more customers and probably hiring my first fulltime employee. So if you know of any small businesses (even single employee setups) that could use consultancy and services on Internet, Infrastructure, or Information technologies please let me know.

Iced coffee seems to be the big thing at the moment and it’s perfect for a steaming hot day like today. So I just tried my first one, bought from Fuel, and am enjoying the refreshing taste while basking in the sun in Midland Park. Beautiful.

Steve Jobs no doubt delivered a fine keynote this morning at Macworld – I haven’t seen it yet, but read Engadget’s live blog this morning with huge anticipation. Here’s my summary of the announcement and how it relates to us in NZ.

Updated Apple TV

This is more-or-less useless to people outside the USA as the biggest new feature is the ability to rent movies from iTunes and watch them as they are streaming down to your Apple TV. You can’t even buy movies from NZ let alone rent them, and the same goes for TV shows. The new interface looks a lot better though, and is available as a free upgrade so it’s worth upgrading anyway. The price has also dropped to $229 (USD) which is equivalent to roughly $299 (NZD) but the Apple Store still has it listed for $498 (NZD) so you’re paying a $200 (NZD) premium over the US price.

Updated iPhone Software

Also irrelevant to NZ as the iPhone is still not available here, and if you hack it to get it working here then you don’t need the updated software anyway.

Updated iPod Touch Software

This was the first announcement that I was genuinely excited about! At last we get the rest of the apps which are available on the iPhone on our iPod Touches! I’ve been hanging out for the Mail and Maps applications but am not too fussed on the others. BUT… The “upgrade” will cost $19.99 (USD)! What..? These are the same apps that are already on the iPhone, it’s just a case of including them in the next firmware update so why do we need to pay for them? I guess this is just another of Apple’s “Early Adopter Tax” that has to be paid if you want to be considered an Apple fan. All new iPod Touches include the updated software and also cost $30 (NZD) less than the original iPod Touch. From the coverage I’ve read so far about this, people are pissed – me too.

Time Capsule for Macs

This is a strange one – it’s an AirPort Extreme wireless router with a built in hard drive, that works with Leopard’s Time Machine feature to backup your Macs over the network. The reason why this is strange is that the current AirPort Extremes have a USB port that allows you to connect a hard drive to, giving you the same setup as the Time Capsule. But you can’t use Time Machine with a hard drive connected to an AirPort Extreme, but you can use it to back up to the hard drive inside the Time Capsule. My only assumption is that Apple wants to sell as many Time Capsules as possible before enabling wireless backups to Airport Extremes.

MacBook Air

This was the big announcement that had all the rumour sites buzzing leading up to the event. Apple have now added a new MacBook to their lineup called the MacBook Air. This device is probably as light as air and is the thinnest notebook available today and still gets 5 hours battery life. On the surface, it definitely looks like an impressive device but I still feel it’s a bit lacking… I especially think that it’s lacking one huge feature which would have made it a killer device – built-in wireless broadband. But it does have Bluetooth 2.1 which means if you have a 3G phone with and HSDPA modem, you should be fine. Also, they decided to ship the standard model with a 4200rpm PATA hard drive, which is surely going to limit the performance of this machine. You can upgrade it to include a 64GB solid state drive (SSD), but in NZ prices this pushes the price up from an already steep $2,999 (NZD) to a prohibitive $5,139 (NZD). Only a fortunate few would be able to afford that, so this will definitely be a status symbol for the rich and famous. Other notable features is that it only has a single USB port, has no optical drive, and has a mini-DV port with a DVI adapter which can drive a 23inch Apple screen.

Summary

So for us plebs in NZ, it’s a pretty disappointing keynote. No movie rentals/downloads, still no iPhone, MacBook Air is too expensive, and we need to pay a tax to get the iPod Touch updates. Not impressed.

Updates

I’ll post links here from NZ-based bloggers as I see them…

• Rod Drury has more questions than answers
• Ben Kepes says Wow…
• Fossie on Geekzone has a few posts: link, link, link, as well as a rant about the iPod Touch Tax, and on the reality of the MacBook Air (I agree – this is more of a status symbol than a useful notebook.) 
• Manhili on Geekzone paid  the iPod Touch Tax and upgrade to 1.1.3

The Consumer Electronics Show was a bit of a letdown to tell the truth. Not that I was there of course, but keeping an eye on sites like Engadget makes you feel like you’re there. Lots of products that won’t be launched for 5 years (if at all) and lots of thinner, larger TVs that will cost too much and also won’t ship for a few years.

One of the big drawcards to CES, sums up how irrelevant the whole event is: Panasonic’s 150 inch TV. Sure it’s impressive that they’ve managed to build one – but who cares? It’s not like you can rush down to Harvey Normans and put it on interest free credit for two years. Surely people must be aware that TVs will get larger while remaining as thin (or thinner) than they currently are. It really just becomes a pissing match between the big LCD manufacturers and we just lap it up with glee.

Then there was the Gizmodogate – where a couple of idiot bloggers ran round the showroom floor turning off TVs with a hacked remote control which only does one function – and that’s to turn off TVs. Just like laser pointers a few years ago, no doubt these TV-B-Gone devices will sell like hotcakes and will become the next major annoyances that we have to put up with.

I guess that CES, is just a huge over-indulgence of technology and is becoming more and more irrelevant as consumers become more picky with the gadgets they buy.

For the second year in a row I’ve made a big effort to watch Bill Gates’s keynote speech at CES, and for the second year in a row I’ve been disappointed. Granted, the video about his last day at Microsoft showed the lighter side to him, but there were no other highlights.

Surface computing is something that demos well but will probably never eventuate to anything. There may be Surface computers that provide interactive displays, but these will just be like touch-screen panels today. I can’t see it happening that you place your cellphone on the Surface and it automagically transfers images or music onto my device easily and seamlessly.

The same goes for the demo of Microsoft’s Sync technology which integrates your MP3 player or phone into your car’s entertainment system. It demos well but can you imagine a mother with screaming kids in the car, talking at her phone and saying, “Play Cars” and the song Cars magically starts playing? It will be more like, “Sorry your device was not recognised, please re-enter your car.” Or, “I’m sorry, did you say, ‘Play Fart?'”

The demo of Live services was the same – what a wonderful world it would be if all of my contacts were on Windows Live, and had Windows Mobile phones, and had a Live Space, and used Live Messenger, and kept their Live Calendar up to date? Then planning an event would be so easy…

I’m interested to see who does the main CES keynote next year – will it even be someone from Microsoft? Imagine if Steve Jobs opened CES – that would be interesting.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has certainly been generating lots of news over the last few days. I’ve got a couple of posts lined with my opinions on some of the more interesting items, starting with the news that Sony have released news that they will be joining the rest of the "Big Four" record companies in selling music tracks without the crippling DRM that all consumers loathe.

David Farrar’s Kiwiblog, and Ben Kepes both posted about this when the news broke declaring that Sony now gets it, and that DRM is finally dead.

Well, that was before the real details came out about Sony’s strategy in the non-DRM playing world…

Turns out, that to obtain these DRM-free tracks, you need to: visit a physical retail store; purchase a special card; go back to your computer at home; scratch off the back of the card revealing a code; log in to the Sony MusicPass website; enter the code; then download the glorious, DRM-free MP3 tracks.

And if that’s not bad enough, there are currently only 37 titles available to choose from. No, that’s not a typo.

I’ve had a quick glance over the titles available and I can see several Celine Dion albums, Barry Manilow, Tony Bennett, and several compilation albums (with imaginative titles like, "70’s Pop Hits", "80’s Pop HIts", "Sensational 60’s", "Rock of the 70’s", "Country Gold The 90’s", you get the idea…) There are also a couple of recent albums from the likes of Avril Lavigne, Alicia Keys, Sean Kingston, and Pink – but those make up the minority.

The best description of how the service works comes from writer, John Scalzi’s blog "Whatever", titled: "Why it won’t work" – including this excerpt:

Kid #2: So to recap, what you’ve got here is a system that makes people leave their house in order to download music at their house, and makes them go to a store to get music that they could get at the store, somewhere else.

Sony BMG dude: Er.

Kid #1: Why don’t you just sell non-DRM’d MP3s off Amazon, like every other major music corporation?

Sony BMG dude: Well.

Kid #2: You don’t actually want to sell unprotected MP3s, do you? You want to be able to say you’re doing it, but really, you want to make it so ridiculously inconvenient that people keep just keep buying CDs and DRM’d tracks off iTunes. Just admit it, bro.

Sony – you still don’t get it.

I bought this cool, Dishy hat for Elliot from Martha‘s shop, Wanda Harland (I also bought a matching one for Deb too – they’ll look so cute together on a summer’s day on Oriental Parade!)

Doesn’t she look cute…

I’m a little underwhelmed by the announcement that Google have released a localised version of Google Maps for NZ. Sure, it’s nice to be able to type a “.co.nz” address to get to the site, and maybe it will be helpful to look for a plumber in Wellington – but when are they going to release updated aerial photos in Wellington??

Here’s the house we lived in a year ago:
http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=35+reuben+avenue…

We lived there for over two years and when we moved in the owners, had built a huge deck long before. Notice the lack of a deck in the photo? But the strange thing is, at some point in the past (can’t remember exactly when) I definitely visited Google Maps and saw the deck plus the neighbour’s deck which had only just been built about 2 years ago. So at some point, Google have switched providers of their aerial photos and have gone back in time to show outdated maps.

There are lots of other examples that I can find, but don’t have the time to link to them all here – so I’ll leave that up to you to explore. Feel free to post links here in the comments.

Please Google – get these updated.

(by the way – if you ever read this post, and you can see a deck out the back of our old house, it means that Google have finally updated their maps. Thanks Google in advance.)