I’m late on this but in the past two weeks it seems every second politician or pundit has been warning us about an “existential threat”. I only became aware of the use of this silly term because of a most excellent article by Bernard Keane. A quick look at Google Trends …
Last night I heard a story. The zoologists at the Melbourne Zoo thought they knew their animals pretty well, but wanted to check out what they were doing at night, so they started videoing what went on. What they discovered surprised and amazed them. There was a kind of clash of …
Square, the financial services business founded by Jack Dorsey one of the Twitter co-founders has just released a pretty cool new appointment and scheduling product. Founded 5 years ago with a elegant mobile credit card reader and app for micro and small businesses, Square now offers an impressive range of products …
The domain name business isn’t easy these days. Margins are squeezed by high competition and high acquisition costs, profitability depends on achieving a high attachment to additional services like email or hosting and cross-selling services like privacy, security, or “premium registrations”, and the regulators are requesting more diligence with data …
When the app Yo was released earlier this year I was pretty sceptical. It was too simple to not be a giant troll by some bros poking fun at the mobile/app/social space. I mean it was released on April fools day and only did one thing which was to send “Yo” to …
During the 2013 election campaign Tony Abbott repeatedly promised to build the roads of the 21st century. Sadly, this wasn’t a nifty metaphoric flourish reflecting a program of investment in Internet infrastructure and education to drive economic growth. When Abbott said roads, he meant roads; coal miners need roads, ports, …
There have been a lot of words written about the European Court of Justice ruling in May this year which forced Google to remove links to content when requested. Here are some I’ve written to expose how the issue is being handled in a simplistic way by most of the …
After 12 years in many different roles, I have moved on from Melbourne IT. When I started as a contractor in the development team, the company had had two massive rounds of redundancies and was busy transitioning from being the monopoly registrar of .com.au domain names in Australia, to registrar …
When I walked into the office with my sleek iPad Air tucked away in my new Kit Universal Bluetooth Keyboard Case, a coworker looked at it and said, “What the fuck is that?” After explaining to him that with a good keyboard I could ditch the laptop altogether and lighten …
Two things happened recently that made me pay attention to wearable tech and the idea of the quantified self, and how both highlights how tech culture is getting it wrong. The first was over lunch when I saw a senior manager plug her Fitbit into her iPhone and sync up her data. …
