Aussie Geek Podcast #013 :: Back for 2009!
Welcome back to the AGP for 2009, we trust that your break was as good as ours. Thanks for making 2008 one of the best years yet for the show, now help us make 2009 better!
Please send us your feedback either via email or by leaving your comment right here. Or click the MyChingo link to leave us an audio comment that we can include in the show!
Subscribe to this Podcast for Free via iTunes and RSS
Don’t foget to also take a look at the Aussie Geek Podcast Forum!
Show Notes
Welcome
Tech News
- New Eee PC
- Another Grab for Yahoo!
- Palm Introduces the Pre
- Mac World Apple KeyNote
- Picasa Plays Nice with Mac
- Twitter Growth
- NASA’s Rovers
- UK’s New Police Powers
- Sacrifice 10 Friends
- Windows 7
- Jing Goes Pro
- Crayon Physics
The Break
Applications
Firefox Extension
- TooManyTabs: Make more than 1 row for your open tabs and more
iPhone App
- Mobile Fotos: Killer app for flickr on the iPhone
Sites and Services
- allvoices: News site combining citizen media and mainstream sources
- Mr Tweet: Get a report on who you should be following and stats
- ReminderFeed: Create a reminder feed for your feed reader
- Playericious: Play back websites saved in delicious based on tag and/or username
Feedback
Farewell
Featured Music
The Screaming Jets
“Supersize” (mp3)
from “Do Ya”
(StockXChange Music)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
Buy at Puretracks
Buy at mTraks
More On This Album
Great episode as always! Glad to see you guys back and at it for 2009.
Crayon Physics kinda reminds me of that Fantastic Contraptions Flash game that I mentioned on an earlier audio comment.
Re UK’s new police powers; There’s been a lot of controversy around these new powers under the far-reaching “Anti-Terrorism Laws,” including the right for police to stop and search citizens for no reason, police stopping and detaining people who are taking photos on the street for no reason and other draconian-type measures. It wasn’t bad enough that the US is paranoid that everyone is out to get them, the UK is getting just as bad.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7351252.stm
Re Mister Tweet; I was kinda disappointed in the results that I got. I was told to follow a bunch of different people, but I wasn’t told WHY I should follow them. It seems to me that it’s all just a popularity contest and a way to make yourself look better by following the supposed “A-list” Twitterers… If my result included reasons why I should be following these people, then it might actually be useful.
I’m thinking about the pre…
I’ll finish up the show in the next day and get back to you.
tweetbacks!?!
iTunes quotes $188 for me to update my library. Don’t think so thanks. The DRM doesn’t bother me - I only have Apple stuff and so the compatibility doesn’t matter. Not sure I understood Dave’s point re backups - I’ve got my stuff backed up on a couple of external hard drives with no problems. But if the worst came to the worst I’d burn to audio CD and re-rip.
1. Tweetbacks are cool! I need to check how you guys did it.
2. I’ve been waiting for Mr Tweet for 2 days now, i wonder how long it takes.
3. Twitter growth is noticeable because I tend to get the fail whale more often now :-/
Thanks for the show!
Good show, however since Dave has got an iPhone the Apple content of the podcast has increased, not so good.
+1 for Network capable printers. I bought a Brother MFC last week and now we can print easily from all 3 computers. Pretty easy to set up, the laptop with Vista connected without a problem but one PC had an issue with the firewall blocking it. Once I worked out that it was a firewall issue it was able to fix it quickly.
I see that some people have been able to get Windows 7 working well on machines with 512mb. I may download it and put it on my play machine.
@Matt Well since we used to have a segment dedicated to all things Mac and now we don’t the Apple content is actually less. If it is news - that’s a bit different, but we try and balance the news… but sometimes it dictates to us what’s in and what’s out. It is not intentional.
@Raf It is a WordPress plugin called not surprisingly “Tweetbacks”:
http://yoast.com/wordpress/tweetbacks/
If your not using WordPress that ain’t going to help you. But if you are then that is how we did it
As far as Mr Tweet - mine took about 24 hours but that was before the press coverage and I think their traffic and requests are up so it will be longer. The other thing is check your Directs - you might have missed it
@Matt Yeah I have to organize a dedicated network printer cause this solution is just not working that well atm. Going to give the new driver a trot first but I think I am up for a new printer. Mind you they are pretty cheap these days.
Thanks for listening guys and the feedback!!
@Dave Yes, I use Wordpress with my own theme. I figured that it would be easier to use the plug-ins on the net instead of writing everything on my own. Thanks!
Excellent show as always. Nice to see you including some iPhone/iPod touch apps,keep them coming. I was thinking about getting a Palm Centro a a phone but got a Samsung instead.
Dave
Re wireless printers. I have a HP C8100 series printer and like it. There is an issue with XP where the drivers crash however it works across the network fine. The key thing with the HP printers is the cheaper they are, the more they cost to run. I originally had a super cheap one, but it used $50 a month in cartridges.
I run my internet through a ADSL modem and then into a switch which feeds into the WAP. If you buy a cabled printer, you may be able to avoid a full wireless printer if you simply plug the printer into the switch component of your ADSL modem/WAP (for the modern ones) and it will act as a wireless printer.
Cheers
George
Back to the UK and the so called new police powers, Herne makes a good point about the heavy handed attitude of UK police. There’s a lot of police focus here now in the name of antiterrorist surveillance but searching people taking photos, albeit with DSLRs at public events, really that’s a bit too far.
There are already plans here in the UK to set up a superdatabase tracking all phone and email communications for the investigation of crime:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/09/dpp-keir-starmer-superdatabase
I really don’t know how much the general public here know or actually even care about it. I think most people here are aware that this sort of thing goes on anyway, but this latest proposal to allow British police or MI5 agents to hack home, office and other private computers without a warrant seems to have been foisted on us from Brussels. The EU wants British police to install spyware on personal computers at the request of other European nations that suspect UK residents of involvement in criminal activity:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/uk-approves-pol.html
This could involve, for example, anyone suspected of terrorism, pedophilia or identity or credit card theft. Civil libertarians are calling on Parliament to enact legislation to require warrants and oversight of the program, but I don’t hear much in the way of outrage from the UK public, just a sort of blind acceptance. There’s very little in the mainstream media about it and that’s part of the problem. I wonder just what it would need to get the UK public up and complaining. The last time we had that here was for the protests against sending British troops into Iraq.
I just wonder if internet censorship here would even cause a stir or if that would be the point where the UK public says enough is enough. I’d be interested to see if that was the straw that breaks the camels back.
By the way, how is the struggle against the Internet Filter going in Australia? Are the DLC making any progress? Have the mainstream media picked up on it? It seems that there are parallels here with our problem. It’s all very well the tech savvy types agitating about these things but it’s only when the mainstream media latch onto it and pursue it that people get galvanized into action.
Really enjoying the 2 Schooners, Dave. Another essential listen. Like the way you guys have cleverly arranged that the AGP and 2 Schooners appear at the top of my play list on my mp3 player. Clever one that picking numbers and the letter A. When I load up new stuff there always the first up!