MGR IT

Earlier this month, Telstra reached a deal with NBN Co regarding its involvement in the national broadband network being rolled out by the federal government.  In a nutshell the Financial Heads of Agreement deal will see Telstra decommission their network and move their voice and broadband services to the NBN Co network as it is rolled out.  Telstra will go from being a competitor of NBN Co to being their biggest customer.

So, what does this mean to you as a Telstra customer or a customer of another telco? 

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The rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and the new kid on the block, Google Buzz, has huge implications for privacy for those who use them. 

Some suggest that no-one cares about privacy any more and while that may be an exaggeration, there is certainly a trend in that direction.  It is certainly not a trend that I personally subscribe to and I wonder whether those keen to put their lives online have really thought through what they are doing.

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Strangely, Microsoft’s Windows Live range of online services don’t seem to receive the attention of some of the newer entrants into the field, such as DropBox and Google Apps, but there are some very useful services to be had for free via Windows Live.  One of those is Windows Live SkyDrive, a file storage and sharing service.

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Google is going to begin phasing out support for the Internet Explorer 6 browser as of the 1st of March.  Google Docs and Google Sites will not support “older browsers” after that date, which means anything before Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0 and Safari 3.0.  Presumably other Google services will follow suit.

For anyone who keeps their systems up to date, this will have no impact, as Internet Explorer 6 is old (and seriously flawed) technology.  However, there are plenty of unpatched systems out there still using IE6 – over 10% according to the w3schools browser statistics site.

If yours is one of those systems, then you should make the switch now, either by upgrading to Internet Explorer 8, or by changing to another browser, such as Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

The worst kept secret in the IT world was confirmed overnight Australian time with Apple unveiling their new tablet computer, the iPad.  You can see some video of Steve Jobs announcing the iPad here.

In short, the iPad looks more like a larger version of the iPhone or iPod Touch, rather then a tablet form iMac or MacBook.  It’s very thin and light with a 9.7 inch touch screen.

I can certainly see a market for this in the consumer area, though I wonder if the pricing will put some off (as is so often the case with Apple products).  There are three models – a 16GB model for US$499, a 32GB model for US$599 and a 64GB model for US$699.  3G mobile network access is an extra US$130 on any of the models.  I have not seen any mention of Australian prices or release dates as yet.

As an avid iPhone user, I can appreciate the convenience of being able to quickly look up a web site or check e-mail on a portable device that is effectively always on.  The larger screen on the iPad can only enhance this experience if you are happy to pay for it.

The “Ute-gate” affair* that is currently dominating Australian politics is obviously interesting from a political point of view, but it also raises issues around the reliability of e-mail evidence. 

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Estimates for the proportion of e-mail that is actually spam range from 80-95%. Whatever the exact figure, it is obviously very high. Efforts to produce technological solutions to the problem are ongoing, but there is no magic bullet just around the corner.

Here, then, is a brief rundown of spam avoidance methods that are available now to minimise the problem as far as possible.

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Internet Explorer 8 has been released by Microsoft in the past few days (see my previous post for info on the Release Candidate 1 version).  I haven’t yet had a chance to fully test the final release version, so at this stage, the warnings regarding upgrading still apply.  There are certainly some great useability benefits in IE8, but I found that RC1 broke some sites, even when using the IE7 Compatibility Mode. 

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Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) has been released recently, which means that the final release of Internet Explorer 8 will not be far away.  Having tested RC1 as well as the previous Internet Explorer 8 Beta, I can say there are some nice new features, but also some potential drawbacks to treat with care.

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If you’re anything like me (and most of the business world), then you receive a huge amount of e-mail every day and keeping on top of it can be very difficult.  Maybe you have some techniques for keeping the mountain of e-mail under control.  Maybe you just keep every e-mail you’ve ever received in your Inbox.  Maybe you have made a New Year’s resolution to become better at processing e-mail.

While it wasn’t really a New Year’s resolution for me, I have decided to try to streamline my e-mail management processes, using a method that falls under the heading of Inbox Zero.  This is a term that encompasses a wide range of techniques and tricks, but essentially it means processing e-mails as they come in, dealing with each e-mail in your Inbox once and keeping the number of messages sitting in your Inbox at zero.  It sounds like a fantasy at first, but it becomes more feasible and attractive when you look at what that actually means.

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