Tech.Ed 2010 Australia
There’s one week to go before I fly to QLD for Microsoft’s Tech.Ed conference on the sunny Gold Coast. Lets face it, in terms of places to do business, there’s plenty of worse places in the world. Tech.Ed is a 4 day conference designed to be a single place to showcase Microsoft’s existing and upcoming technologies and services to around 2,500 attendees. Tech.Ed 2010 Australia runs from the 24th – 27th of August.
This year Windows Phone 7 will be on display, this will be the first opportunity for public to get hands on with development hardware. Until now its only been very select developers who’ve been given development hardware, the rest of WP7 fans have had to rely on the software emulator in the development tools.
This year I’ll be attending as media which means I’ll be interviewing Microsoft personnel from different aspect of the business. If you have any questions you’d like answered, then please leave a comment and I’ll be sure to ask it. Along with interviews I’ll also be attending some sessions, attending the media dinner and writing a bunch of posts for the site so be sure to check techAU.tv frequently during Tech.Ed.
Topics
At this year’s conference, there’ll be sessions / coverage of the following areas of Microsoft.
- Windows Phone 7
- Cloud Computing (Windows Azure)
- Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Exchange 2010 SP1, Unified Communications
- Xbox 360 Kinect
- and more..
Schedule
Tuesday
- Keynote
- Opening Party
- AUTechHeads party
Wednesday
- Interviews with Microsoft experts
- Sessions
- Media dinner
Thursday
- Interviews
- Sessions
- Closing party
Friday
- Sessions
- Endnote
Attendee gift
This year attendees will receive a free Crumpler Messenger bag that will accommodate a 13” laptop. Last year attendees received a HP Netbook, that was obviously an exceptional gift in the height of the Netbook hype cycle. Years prior to that attendees received Targus backpacks. Given that a lot of attendees are repeat customers, there’s only so many bags a person needs.
More information @ Tech.Ed
Australian speed average: 2.6Mbps, puts us 50th in the world
According to Akamai Technologies latest international report of the state of the internet, Australia’s ranks 50th in the world. This is based on average internet connection speeds for the first quarter of 2010. If your not familiar with Akamai, they are one of the largest CDNs in the world. Distributing massive amounts of data around the world for some o the biggest companies in the world – Amazon, Microsoft, BBC and Hulu to name a few.
Quite frankly 50th place is abysmal for a developed country, fortunately we at least have a strategy for the future to improve our standing dramatically – the NBN. Our Average connection speed of 2.6Mbps which is actually a decent speed, 3 years ago. Australian consumers are quickly adopting ADSL2 as plan costs decline and data caps slowly increase. On the other end of the scale remote areas are still stuck with 256kbps or worse.. dial-up.
So how much will the NBN’s now 93% coverage of 12Mbps minimum increase our standing in the internets world ? Don’t forget other countries aren’t standing still either with at least the US (16th) and the UK working on NBN’s of their own. Add to that Australia’s new fibre network won’t be complete till around 2018, expect Aussies to trail the world for a while yet.
The first place position in the report goes to South Korea clocking in with a decent 12Mbps average. They certainly wouldn’t have been my first guess, that would have gone to Sweden or Japan with their impressive top-end speeds of 100Mbps+. Obviously there’s still some customers stuck in the past holding their average back.
Image credit: PC World
iPhone 4 plans are out, which one should you choose ?
The wait is over people, Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and 3 (now owned by Voda) have all announced their iPhone 4 plans. Due to launch this Friday the latest version of the iPhone leaves a lot of existing customers wondering if they should upgrade.
Despite the features on the new iPhone, probably the single biggest influencer as to whether someone upgrades is the cost of doing so. Each iteration of the phone has come with better plans with competition being an awesome benefit to consumers. This time round we see the key areas of overall cost and data limits improve once again.
Telstra [link]
Optus [link]
Vodafone
Image credit: ZDNet Australia
3 
Image credit: ZDNet Australia
Best picks:
So there’s a lot of data in the plans, the good news is there are plenty of options for consumers. Given the wide range of plans, there should be one that suits you. Remember this year is kind of special, those iPhone 3G owners that didn’t update to the 3GS will be out of contract and be free to switch carriers. Those of us who did upgrade to the 3GS will likely be offered incentives for staying put, the price of early termination fees being heavily discounted. Last year upgrade discounts were 40-50% off the normal price. No carrier has announced upgrade discounts for existing customers.. they’re quickly running out of time with only 2 days left. If your an existing iPhone owner.. watch your inbox closely.
Other than price, another important influencer is network coverage and speed. Telstra has the best network coverage of all providers no questions asked, but this time round there’s one important difference. The iPhone 4 supports 3G over the 900Mhz wireless spectrum, something the iPhone 3G and 3GS did not. This is great news for Optus and in-term Vodafone and 3 as they all utilize the 900Mhz 3G frequency.
Personally I get great 3G signal and speed around Albury Wodonga, but drive 10 minutes down the road and your back on 2G. After being used to 3G speeds, dropping back to 2G is a painful experience. Optus’ 900Mhz coverage spans most of the state, which means 3G coverage will dramatically improve.
The green areas on the map above represents coverage using both 2100Mhz and 900Mhz 3G.
So choose wisely people you’ll be locked into another 24 month contract… that is of course until next year when all have to break contract again to get iPhone 5.
ABC News 24 launches tonight [updated]
At 7.30pm tonight, the ambitious 24/7 News channel will launch. With reporters around the world, ABC News 24 aims to provide the most comprehensive up to date news coverage in Australia. This will be a first for Australia and no doubt quickly become the default location (second only to twitter) for breaking news.
If you don’t yet see the channel, you may need to rescan the channels on your DVR.
Update
The channel is now live. ABC News 24 is available as an over the air digital transmission as well as an online stream as well. A mobile version of the channel will be available soon.
More @ ABC
Not on Facebook? Half a Billion are.
Image source: dzinepress.com
Maybe your being “cool” by not joining the phenomenon that is Facebook, apparently people like you are few and far between. Out of 6.5857 billion people on the planet, 0.5 billion of us are active users of the largest social network in the world. So what does ‘active users’ actually mean ? To be an active user you must have logged into Facebook at least once in the past month. Keep in mind, using the Like button that features on many sites across the web will also count as being ‘Active’. Add to that the fact that many people pipe their twitter feeds into Facebook and you start to get an appreciate the number isn’t perhaps as big as it first seems.
With that said, there’s no doubt this milestone is a massive one. Facebook is now a potential advertising juggernaut, one that Google is no doubt watching with caution. The ability to monetize product advertisement that is recommended by a trusted friend or colleague over a generic Adsense ad is immense. We’ve heard stories about Google launching their own social network to try and capitalize on this same principal, but with a 500 million active user head start it seems like an insurmountable task.
Personally Facebook Connect has become my default way of logging into sites wherever its available. Remembering usernames and passwords to the hundreds of sites I have connections with is simply not practical. Sharing photos, videos, stories and status updates with friends is a daily event, something that I get a lot of value from, so to me its not at all surprising Facebook is as popular as it is.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg explains the key to Facebook is its users and the connections they create across their networks. To celebrate the 500 million active user milestone, Facebook are launching a new application called Facebook Stories. Essentially this allows users to discover the Facebook experiences of others or submit your own.
There’s not many in Australia, so lets represent and get submitting!
More @ Facebook Blog
techAU Episode #50 this weekend
It’s been 3 long years of hard work, but it’s finally here, episode 50 of the podcast. It has been amazingly humbling to see the response to each and every episode of the podcast, especially the most popular. While starting from 0, episodes now attract up to 10,000 viewers.
So here in lies the challenge.. to make episode 50 the best yet. After much consideration, Episode 50 will be focused on your questions and feedback. The people who have made the show a success! So if you have any burning questions about my setup, thoughts of any areas of technology or want me to review a product, then let me know and consider it done.
You can submit topics for episode 50 by emailing jason@techAU.tv with Episode #50 in the Subject. Also I’m hoping to stream live, so keep an eye out on twitter for information relating to that.
Switch from Windows Media Player to Zune
Windows Media Player has been the standard built-in media player software in Windows for as long as I can remember. Now in Windows 8, WMP is up to version 11, but there’s a new competitor in the market, strangely this also comes from Microsoft.
Zune is the desktop software that accompanies the Zune hardware device available in the US. We haven’t yet seen Zune hardware in Australia, so why do we care about Zune software ? Windows Phone 7 will launch later this year and require Zune software to sync your content to the device. Similar to the iPhone being married to iTunes, Microsoft have decided to force users down the same tie in path.
You don’t need to wait till later this year to find out what the Zune experience is like, you can download and try it out now.
Shortly after using Zune you realise that Windows Media Player largely becomes redundant. If your running Windows 7, you can actually remove WMP from the OS entirely and rely solely on Zune for all media playback on your PC. By default Zune works with your keyboard media controls and automatically references content paths defined in your Win7 Libraries. Zune still allows for ripping of CD audio, and searching across your collection, but ads new features like Quickplay and Smart DJ Auto-playlists.
Metro UI
While the WMP 11 UI is ok, it’s very, this generation and largely unexciting. The new Zune interface is referred to as ‘Metro’ and is perhaps a portal into what’s coming in Windows 8. Metro’s core principle is clean, slick, simple. Minimalistic UI elements and smooth transitions, are completed by a borderless window that separates itself from the desktop with subtle shadows. Overall the design and feel of the product is solid, there’s no quirks or unexpected surprises, it just works intuitively. 
Limitations
So with a slick new UI and Zune and future Windows Phone 7 support, are there any downsides to using Zune ? There is actually one serious drawback to using Zune software, you cannot open an online video / audio stream using the app. Personally I listen to a lot of internet radio, so this is annoying, not everyone does, so this may not be an issue for all. My workaround for this is to set streams to open in iTunes. As an iPhone owners I need that installed anyway, so it’s a reasonable solution, but I would like to see Zune add this feature in the future.
Zune 5.0
Zune Software is currently at 4.2.202.0, which means the next major update will likely be version 5.0 and will arrive when WinPho7 ships. What’s not included in this version is applications or and due if your outside the US there’s also no marketplace. The Zune Marketplace will sell music, television and movies. Currently Australia’s only official Zune offering is the Zune video marketplace via the Xbox 360.
