Life & Technology

I’ve always believed that technology has a way of drawing people together – the immediacy of the Internet, email and mobile phone gives us instant access to people like never before.

To bolster my belief, a press release recently crossed my desk from a branding company, which was claiming success in an experiment involving Twitter. Basically, they set up an account pretending to be a NSW police department, and managed to get 2,000 followers. What they wanted to know was; would people interact with the police through a social media? Would people react positively or ignore the police?

The agency, Mentally Friendly, is claiming success even though they didn’t inform the police of what they were doing (at the time of print, the NSW police were not too happy with the experiment, but no other information is forthcoming as to if they plan to take action against the company). Now, I have no way of measuring the success or not, after all, they didn’t give out any facts or figures such as how many of the 2,000 followers engaged positively with the pretend police. But what it does raise is an interesting question. Will people engage with state or government departments when given the opportunity? It seems the answer is yes. And, according to the agency, a lot of the interaction was constructive.

I have no idea how this would work at a governmental level – I mean who wouldn’t love a job working for a government agency where you are tweeting all day, even if it is troubleshooting. Yet, what it does do, is bring the government closer. Some might gag at this idea – both federal and state governments are hardly the most popular institutions – but then again, if you are one of those who always feel the government can do a better job, what better way than social networking.

It is immediate, lets you vent, and if you get enough followers on a particular subject, how could the government ignore the people? A cynic might say “easily’, but I have more faith in politicians and people power. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Great to hear that the Federal Government has finally got its act together with regard to companies who sell premium SMS services to consumers.
For far too long some of these operators have gotten away with taking unsuspecting customers for a ride, with some shonky companies charging exorbitant prices for premium services that some people don’t even realise they have signed up for.

From July 1, this is all about to change with some of these companies facing fines up to $250,000 if they don’t follow certain guidelines. Some of these companies are charging up to $5 a minute to use their services.

For those of you who take the moral high ground and use the “well, they signed up for the service,” or “nobody forced them to sign up, pay your bill” arguments, a recent survey found that up to 90 percent of people didn’t even know they had signed up to an agreement. Another 55 percent said they tried to unsubscribe, but either couldn’t, or the attempt to do was so convoluted that they couldn’t see the woods for the trees.

Let’s call a spade a spade. There are operators out there that offer up honest, transparent services. They are not the problem. Unfortunately, there are a group of “entrepreneurs” (and I use the term loosely), whose sole purpose is to try and rip as much of your hard-earned cash away from you as possible, using dubious and nefarious means. And this is who the legislation is aimed at.

Finally, the government has given the Australian Communications and Media Authority the ammunition to fire a broadside at operators that are a blight on the SMS landscape.

Interesting story on the Today Show this morning with the announcement of new search engine Wolfram, which is touted by some to be a rival to Google.

Wolfram is definitely a useful tool, but unlike Google or Yahoo it doesn’t send you to websites, but gives you practical answers to objective questions. It was originally designed for mathematicians and scientists and tries to give answers based on facts. It does so by searching the web for exact answers.

I have found that when asking a question such as the “world’s tallest building” it answered the question, no problem. Not only did it give me the list of the five tallest buildings, and their height, it gave me the option to find out more information. However, when I asked it for the world’s oldest man, it could not answer the question – probably because there are too many aspirants to the title.

To be fair, the man who developed the programme – Stephen Wolfram – calls the service a computational knowledge engine, which it probably a more accurate description of the software.

Eventually I can see this being a very useful tool for school kids and university students who want exact answers to questions when researching projects – not only because it gives the correct answers, but goes beyond that with providing ancillairy information.

Is it a super intelligent version of Google? No. But it will certainly find a niche in the cyberspace landscape.