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’ve been doing a lot of thinking around the subject of hosted desktops recently. Anyone familiar with Cloud Computing concepts will be well aware of two main cloud computing areas – Software as a Service (something along the lines of Salesforce.com or Google Apps) or Infrastructure as a Service, which is generally considered server infrastructure as a service (think Amazon AWS). AWS is a really, really good IaaS platform, but it’s very server & storage centric. For example, all the standard Amazon AMI’s (machine images) are for server OS’s (Windows 2008 server and the likes).

People are comfortable and familiar with the concepts of having their email or server infrastructure in the cloud, but not so much with the concept of having a desktop in the cloud. What if you had your Windows 7 or Mac OSX instance running in the cloud, available and accessible to you everywhere? Do you see this as being a problem? Are you comfortable with the concept? The same types of questions will arise for cloud desktops as they do for cloud email / storage solutions, namely:

• Is my data secure?
• Who owns my data?
• Can I get my data back / move it if I want to?
• Where is it hosted?
• Who has access to my data?

But, my question is, do you have other concerns about you desktop living in the cloud? All of the above questions I can easily address (and I do every single day!). I can think that network connectivity and latency will be key concerns. But what else? Method of access will be a concern, especially for corporates thinking of moving desktop infrastructure to the cloud. What do they do with all their existing hardware? What do they give their staff going forward, netbooks & thin clients?

And what about cost? In the past few weeks, I have spoken to several companies considering a move to hosted desktop solutions. But cost is a concern and this is something that I’m currently trying to evaluate and understand fully. Is a hosted desktop solution really cheaper in the long run than in-house infrastructure? Sure, you don’t need the capital outlay upfront that say an upgrade in desktop os, or hardware would be, you don’t need to pay for power and maintenance, but you do still need to pay for an access terminal.

And another key question – is hosted desktops really cloud computing? To cloud computing purists, the cloud revolves around SaaS as opposed to IaaS. Is hosted desktops something that is here to stay, or simply a stop gap measure for people until all relevant software can be packaged as a SaaS offering.

I will do a deeper dive into the technical aspects of hosted desktops in the near future, but for now I’m really interested in feedback via comments or email on peoples thoughts on this concept.

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.

I’ve been using a new model MacBook Pro quite a bit recently and I have finally figured out what all the hype is about the MacBook Glass Trackpad. There are so many different shortcuts and time saving tips that make this a true joy to work with and really does leave you scratching your head wondering what the hell every other laptop manufacturer out there is doing.

I thought I would share some of the tips I’ve picked up recently as I know that a lot of people aren’t aware of these features.

• One finger is for regular movement of the cursor.
• Two fingers in either an up-down or side-to-side motion functions like the scroll bar allowing for easy navigation within an application, on web pages and in other documents.
• A turning of your fingers rotates objects such as photos while a pinching motion will zoom in or out on the page or object.
• Three fingers swiping side-to-side works like as forward and backward navigation and is just outstanding for web browsing or even navigating around within the Finder.
• A four-finger swipe side to-side brings up the application switcher, (similar to Cmd-Tab).
• Four fingers swiping up clears the screen of all open windows for easy access to the desktop, while a swipe down opens up the Expose view of all open windows.

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.