Life & Technology

Clip courtesy of the Kerri-Anne Show
With school holidays just around the corner, thought it appropriate to talk to Kerri-Anne about things that are in the pipelin for the holidays. One little gadget that caught my eye was the Star Wars Force Trainer. A little expensive at $249, but still a great little gadget that is really a meditation device. It uses wireless technology to measure your brainwaves while you concentrate and allows you to move a ball up and down depending on how hard you concentrate.

 

 

 

Also had a look at the DualSim phone, which allows users to have two SIM cards in the one phone. Handy for business or personal use, or one kids can use whereby they have one card for friends and another for their family. There are a couple of units out there that do this. This particular one I’m not sold on. Looked a bit flimsy in my opinion.

 

 

Then there was the iPod Shuffle, which is quite a good little portable music player. Being Apple, it reeks quality, and is probably a good starting point for a kid in that it only costs $79. The only downside to it is that it doesn’t have much room compared to other MP3 players. Then again, some of the more expensive ones have more features.

 

 

Demonstrated the sling box, which I’ve mentioned before. You download some software to your PC, connect the box to your media centre or television and you can stream you television to your PC anywhere you like. It’s a mobile solution to your television watching needs. Very cool.

 

 

Finally, there was the new Sony portable console, the PSPgo. Unlike its predecessor, you download games (either free or at a cost) from the Playstation Network. You can also use a Skype feature, and it is bluetooth enabled.

Clip courtesy of the Nine Network Australia

 

Had an interesting time yesterday talking to Nick Coe from A Current Affair about the different mobile phone plans that are out there.

 

 

I’ve said for some time now that it is not in the best interests of the Telcos for you and your family to go shopping for the right plan – they rely on your ignorance and/or lack of interest in plans, and therefore make more money. My advice is to shop around, shop around, shop around! This is especially true if you are a family with teenagers and they all have mobile phones. There are plans out there that allow you to bundle landline, broadband, some pay TV and mobile aspects. This makes sense if you are a high users of your mobile.

 

 

If you are more of a home body, then there is always Skype, and if you are talking PC to PC via a video hook up then the only outgoing cost is your broadband connection.

 

 

Prepay is also another way that you can cut down costs. Some of the carriers have generous capped plans that cost a certain amount of money, but actually cover quite a few hours of air time.

 

 

I know it sounds generic, but at the end of the day there is a plan out there that will suit – it’s a matter of finding it. Some people can’t be bothered, but you will be amazed at the amount of money you can save – up to $100 a month, that’s $1,200 a year – if you just spend an hour going over them.

I was looking through the Internet this morning, when a story caught my eye. The subject was a term called ‘net neutrality’, which will probably not have too much affect on Australia for reasons that I’ll explain, but is an interesting subject nonetheless.

What is it? Well, it’s a phrase made up by Internet users who don’t like the tendency of the network owners (read Telstra, Optus etc) to prioritise content – at a price. Telcos in the US are pushing for their case, but the Federation Communications Commission’s head honcho, Julius Genachowski, is set to put the kibosh on it – the result being much happiness by the likes of YouTube, Google and Amazon, not so much with carriers like AT&T and Verizon. Telcos believe they have to disincentivise companies or people from downloading so much content to stop them slowing the network down.

So why shouldn’t it be an issue here? Well, the main problem in the US is that the Telcos are right – space is being squeezed on the internet, but this is due to some carrier plans that have unlimited content. Now, here in Australia, some plans do claim ‘unlimited content’, whereas in fact they are not. However, in the US, unlimited content, is, well, unlimited content, and that brings up a whole slew of problems for the carriers. Because with literally 10s of millions of users, and fair few of them downloading like crazy – the bandwidth is struggling to keep up, and therefore the solution from Telcos is charge more for when this happens, thus Internet users not being happy.

The likes of YouTube and Google love these unlimited plans for obvious reasons, but while they may be smiling, there will come a time – which some claim is fast approaching – whereby the information super highway will eat itself and the AT&T’s and Verizon’s of this world will be having a case of the “I told you so’s”.