DjMagra's stuff 'n' stuff

As we all well know, Apple’s iPhone 4 is the current must-have gadget. As a self confessed Apple ‘fan boy’, I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on an iPhone 4 since it was first announced.

As I’m a Telstra Business customer, I have been patiently waiting for Telstra to allow for the iPhone 4 to be distributed amongst it’s business channel. For some reason, they have made the decision to release the phone only to their consumer channel first – and despite my having some pretty good contacts within Telstra itself, I have had to wait to get my hands on it.

I did try to purchase one in the Apple Store last week – but apparently they can only sell to Telstra’s non-business customers so I had no joy there!

So yesterday, as I was wandering around Brisbane CBD with some time to spare, I decided to try calling into the Telstra T-Life store to see if they have any in stock. I know from previous experience that they can in fact sell to business – even if they are likely to screw things up (again, have had that experience).

I was quite pleased and excited to hear that they did in fact have iPhones in stock – only to be cut down seconds later and explained that they are only prepared to sell these to new – and not existing customers!!

I was amazed! Talk about a blatant disregard for existing loyal customers. How many of these existing customers must Telstra be loosing every day who get disgruntled with this response and walk next door to a Vodafone / Optus store and buy from there?

I’m tempted to even look into the legality of this. Telstra are openly discriminating against a particular demographic and refusing to sell them a product that they have in stock. If anyone has an insight into this I would be very interested to hear.

I recently picked myself up a new 15″ MacBook Pro. Beautiful, beautiful machine. One of the pre-requisites that I had when buying this was that I got the High Res 1680 x 1050 screen with it. And oh my, am I glad that I did!

Some people may think that the extra $140 for a few extra pixels is overkill. However, I can assure you that once you start using it, you will agree that it’s not. This screen is so beautiful and such a joy to work with. I now notice that when I move to any other machine, be that my 24″ iMac or Kassie’s identical MacBook Pro (without the high res screen) that I think they look really pixelated and small.

If you are in the market for a new MBP, please, please do yourself the favour and buy this screen.

As someone who flies quiet a bit for both business and pleasure and is likely going to see that increase over the coming months, having to disconnect from my laptop / phone for the hour or two that I am in the air is a major hassle. Sure, I could read offline content or watch a tv show / movie, but that’s not really what I want to be doing. If I had the ability to continue to work, or communicate via Twitter / chat or stay updated with the news, it would make a massive difference.

Ask anyone who has flown across the US recently about the benefits of inflight WiFi and you will find almost everyone a fan. It’s also a service that people are more than happy to pay for and I too would be one of those. Given the current state of the airline industry globally, you would think that any revenue stream would be most welcome.

However, it would appear that neither of the big two Australian airlines Qantas or Virgin Blue have any concrete plans in place to provide inflight WiFi at any stage soon. I spoke to a friend of mine who is a Qantas engineer about this very topic last night and he confirmed that Qantas have looked at it using pico-cell technology and have even run a tial, but currently it is not on the priority list to deliver. His thoughts are that even when they do come to look into it, it’s likely to be on international flights before it hits the domestic market. This doesn’t make sense to me, surely the high volume domestic business traffic would be the best return on investment for the airlines?

Whilst the fact that they are looking into it is welcoming, the fact that they are investigating using pico-cell technology is disheartening. This is likely to lead to a slow and expensive sattelite based solution that is going to make media rich, content heavy use impossible. There are much better alternatives available, utilising existing mobile phone technology which is far more cost friendly and faster and in fact, it is this type of technology that is powering most of the US based inflight WiFi services.

There is a more indepth review of the airlines plans dating back to March this year in this article from The Australian.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has experience of the airlines plans, their thoughts and when we might expect to hear something.

It’s a simple phrase that we’ve all probably heard, but “wow, that coffee smells good” is a comment I hear probably two to three times a day.

The reason? I brew my own coffee in a plunger at the kitchen at my office and anyone who walks into the room as I’m doing so always ends up saying it. It gets rather tedious!! Then, just after they have said that to me, they proceed to make themselves a cup of instant coffee, if that’s what you call it.

This absolutely baffles me. Producing a good cup of coffee in any office isn’t difficult or expensive. I tend to stop of at my favourite coffee stop, Campos in the Valley once a week on my way to work, pick up a bag of their wonderful Roma Espresso (their darkest, strongest roast) and have them grind it for my plunger.

From there, it’s a case of making my coffee in the plunger as and when I need it, which is far better than any instant coffee you will ever drink, is better than you will get in most coffee shops and is a damn site cheaper to boot (a 250g bag costs me $10 and does me a week (I drink 4 or 5 a day) and my plunger cost me about $15).

So, I urge that if you crave good coffee in the office environment, do yourself a favour and find a good roaster and invest in a plunger / filter and give your tastebuds a sensation. No one should have an excuse for drinking poor coffee.

UPDATE: I should also mention that you don’t need to live in the Valley to pickup coffee from Campos, they also have an online store where you can purchase and have coffee delivered to your door.

I think it’s safe to say that this blog is now officially dead. I don’t really want to declare it as such, but I really don’t see myself bringing it back to life any time soon, life is too busy, and I don’t actually have a whole lot to say here anymore anyways!

If you have been, thanks for checking in, maybe someday we will meet again!

This is just a quick test post using the wordpress plugin for my new iPhone.

I’m so in love with this phone it’s awesome and makes my life on the road a million times better and more productive, plus it keeps me entertained too!

Wow, this is pretty awesome news!! Google Australia have just announced that they are after launcing Street Views for lots of locations around Australia. I’ve just had a quick peek on Google Maps and I can see that they have covered the area around our apartment in Brisbane quite well, and I can’t wait to get home tonight and try this out in Google Earth on the mac. This is really, really exciting news though, especially as I should now be able to put together some mashups to show family and friends back home various places that I am day to day around Brisbane.

Oh man, I’ve waited for this weekend to come for a long time. The last 2 months in work have been completely hectic. Anyone who knows me knows that I am well used to exceptionally long hours and hard work, but I think that I can safely say that the last 2 months have been amongst the most hectic that I have ever worked.

Added to that, the last two weeks have just been frought with various unexpected problems that have cropped up on a number of our systems, and it seems like every time I fix one problem, another has been croppign up.

I don’t have anything special lined up for this weekend, but, I really can’t wait to get it out of here and just kick back and not think about work (other than for about an hour when I have to apply some server patches) for an entire weekend. That is until my alarm rings at 430 on Monday morning and I have to catch a red-eye to Sydney for a few days down there!

I wrote the other day about how much I want to get my hands on an iPhone, but, that until the day comes that I can just walk into an Optus store to buy one, without having to sign up for a contract and wait a few weeks on delivery like they’re currently offering, that I was going to wait and see if any other mobile company made a move. I was actually expecting 3 to sign a deal that would be cheaper and better than anything Optus, Telstra or Vodafone could offer.

Today, right from left of field comes the dark horse. Virgin Mobile (who are part of the Optus Group) have announced that they’re going to carry the iPhone with the following plans:

• Customers will be able to bag a 8GB iPhone 3G for $0 upfront if they sign a 24-month contract at $70 per month.

• For the $70 monthly fee, customers will receive $520 worth of calls and text, and 1GB of data download capacity.
• Customers can upgrade the monthly download capacity to 2GB by paying an additional $15 per month.
• 16GB iphone $100/month, $520 calls, 5GB data

Hopefully I’ll have a 16Gb white iPhone from Virgin over the next few days!