I purchased an Android phone a few weeks ago. Part of the reason that I got it was that I wanted to see what the differences were between Android and iPhone.  This extends out to how to program them as well, so I had to write an application, just like I did for iPhone. Last night, I released my little application.  Its a usage meter for my ISP, Internode. I deliberately chose something quite simple so that I could cut my teeth on the platform, and I must say that I'm very impressed.

I’ve been trying to work out what I want to do with my career recently. When I’ve been speaking with mentors and colleagues, the first question that comes up is quite reasonably always “What is it you want to do?”. I have to admit that this question has had me stumped for some time. For the last three years, I’ve been working as a principal consultant in the system integration space for medium to large size businesses, and I have not found it satisfying.

My ageing iPhone 3G didn't take the update to iOS 4.0 very well. It still worked, but it seemed clunky and slow after the upgrade. Six weeks ago, I (conveniently) took this as a sign that I needed a new phone, and started considering my options. I could wait for the new shiny iPhone 4, or I could look at Android. It has been reported that Android has caught up to Apple now, both in terms of hardware and software.

This post is basically just to try out embedding a google wave post in a blog post :) There is some news however. I am giving a lecture to a Masters of IT class at Monash. This wave is the place where I am gathering information about what I will present. I will also provide access to the students during the class, if they wish to participate or continue the discussion at a later date.

With Facebook's recent stumbles in online privacy, a lot of people are now calling for distribtued information sharing systems, which people can use to interoperate between different servers, different providers, or run your own if you so choose. The Diaspora project has been started by a bunch of grad students to do exactly that, and it looks like they've gone viral.  At the time of writing, they had raised over $160,000, when all they were looking for is $10,000.

Okay, that should be forwarding, but I wanted some alliteration :) Some time ago, I posted a very technical approach to forwarding email properly using Microsoft Exchange, which is useful if you work at an organisation that uses it. At the time, I was aware that the steps involved were to technical for some people, so I didn't really expect too many people to take it up. Some colleagues at work expressed some interest in using themselves, but didn't want to go to the effort of setting up their own man-in-the-middle server to fix the emails.

I'm presenting a session at EJA tomorrow, entitled "Choose Your Cloud". I'll be comparing the different cloud vendors, with a particular focus on Google App Engine. As an experiment, I've done my presentation in Prezi. I'm not sure if its cool or distracting. I'll check with my audience tomorrow to find out :) Choose your Cloud on Prezi

Ars Technica has posted about research that has been conducted about prediction your location, based upon data gathered from mobile phone towers.  The research shows that it is possible to predict where you will be at any given time with 93% accuracy, even before additional information such as calendars is taken into consideration.  That is spectacularly good, and just goes to show how good the information that is being gathered by our gadgets really is.

Yesterday, I posted a quick reply to a post on the google wave developer blog about creating a form based workflow system for google wave.  I was quite busy at the time and i think in my haste I may have been a bit brusque.    By way of making amends, here is how I would set up such a system. A forms workflow engine needs a number of components in order to operate correctly.

Google just posted on their Wave Developer Blog that their "wishlist" would have on it a way to process document workflow using google wave.  This reminds me of apost I wrote a while back on what google wave could be used for.  I did a proof of concept, but taking the concept to production would take too much effort for one guy in his spare time.  Probably the biggest barrier is integrating with HR systems.

Last week, I ranted about how our cellphones will start adapting to what we are doing based upon the information they can gather on our behaviour.  Right on cue, Toshiba have now announced that they are building exactly this technology, and it will be available by the end of the year.  I'm impressed.  I wonder if they will introduce it only into the Japanese market, or more widely on Android or something similar.

About 3 months ago, I wrote a google wave gadget, which allows users to collaboratively work on a google wave gadget within google wave.  I've gotten a bit of publicity out of it and its all been great.   Sadly, tonight, the wave that I created to document my gadget has crapped itself, collapsing under the publicity of its own popularity, with more than 200 blips and 500 participants.   The main blip in the wave now has no content whatsoever, and I can't view its history to repair its view.

I've been thinking the last couple of days about the future of phone user interfaces, and I suppose the future of interfaces in general.  At the moment we have fairly static interfaces, with a scrolling list of applications with the occasional widget to tell us the weather forecast or what not.  We set it up how we like it and thats it.  Some user interfaces (in particular, I'm thinking of Android's pages) provide different screens to cater for different use cases, but it is still a manual affair.

The local Melbourne chapter of GTUG is hosting a meeting around developing extensions for Google Wave this wednesday at RMIT.  The big presenter there will be Pamela Fox, Google's developer relations person, but I've been asked to give a quick run down at the end on my experiences developing a mind map gadget.  If I get time, I might also theorise about how wave could be used to provide ad-hoc communications focused tools inside business.

Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg recently said that privacy is no longer a social norm, Google's Eric Schmidt has also said that if you want to do things online that you want to keep private, then you really shouldn't use online services such as Google, due to laws requiring identification and retention of data. There are benefits to treating your privacy as a commodity.  The most obvious examples are the personalities that have achieved fame and riches through living their lives in a very public fashion, such as Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, but each and every one of us makes a decision to trade our privacy each time we go online, whether we do it knowingly or not.

I've just updated my Google Wave Mind Map gadget to a new version.  New features include: It renders graphically now, so things are a little prettierIt won't work on Firefox versions earlier than 3.0.  If you are running an earlier version I strongly suggest that you upgradeThere is now the ability to edit properties, accessable via the properties menu button.There is a context menu that can be used to access the menu, accessible via the Right Mouse button.

I was having a drink with some colleagues last night, and the subject of the over-use of high-availability environments came up.   At too many customer sites we see requirements that the system must have 5 9s uptime (approximately 15 minutes a year downtime) when there is patently no reason for such a requirement.  As a result, we end up spending far more time, more hardware, and more software licenses on the solution than is required.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I oppose the idiotic mandatory internet filter that is being proposed by the Australian federal government at the moment.  I took the time today to write to my local member, Michael Danby, to oppose the policy.  I suggest that anyone who agrees with me that the filter is stupid, which should be anyone that understands the concepts of the internet, does the following things:

My extended family is beginning to ask the standard christmas question: What do you want for a present?  I'm having difficulty thinking of a gaudy trinket to ask for, so I've decided to ask for a donation to a worthy cause. We saw Muhammad Yunus On Andrew Denton's Elders show the other night, and I was very impressed with his vision for improving the lot of the world's poor.  He makes it seem like solving poverty isn't hard, which makes a great contrast to the things that some people say.

Engadget have just reported that TI have released a hackable watch, which can do all sorts of things including HRM straight out of the box.  This is really interesting.  I wonder if I can make it work with Bleep.  Of course I should probably concentrate of finishing Bleep first. At $49 I reckon its a steal!  I might ask Santa for one for Christmas

A lot of people are saying that using Google Wave to discuss conferences live is the new hotness. Given that there will be a special google wave announcement at tomorrow's Enterprise Futures Forum in Melbourne, I'm willing to guess there will be waves for the conference. In anticipation, I have created a wave for the tech discussion session I am running on local implications for cloud computing. There's not much there at the moment.

Melissa, Courtenay and I went to see Abbe May perform a blues/rock solo gig at the Weseley Anne last night. We always try and see her when she's in town, and as usual she delivered. The style was a bit different this time, as she was on her own and had to adapt some of her songs to fit the format. Abbe also performed a bunch of covers, as she explained afterwards to "

Enterprise Java Australia are holding a conference on the 17th of November in Melbourne, with keynote speeches on the Broadband initiative, Green IT, SOA, andGoogle Wave.  I will be facilitating one of the afternoon tech sessions on Cloud Computing.  If you're at the event, come and say hi to me. There's a 2 for 1 registration offer open until mid day on Friday.

Its not nearly as bad as all that.  In fact its a good thing.  Melissa's first solo show outside of the university system opened last night at Metalab in Sydney, and was very successful.  She sold some pieces, chatted with lots of people, and we had some fun.  The proprietors of Metalab are very welcoming and friendly and we all went out for Vietnamese food afterwards which I thought was a nice touch.