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.

More @ Akamai via ITWire

Image credit: PC World

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.

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

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

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.

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.

This morning (Australian time), Apple have denied claims of hardware issues with iPhone 4 despite widespread reports of reception problems. Steve Jobs downplayed the issue, explaining that other phones do the same thing. Apparently El Jobso hasn’t seen the users created videos displaying very clearly that the reception issue with iPhone 4 is more severe than other devices. Not only were reception levels impacted, but data speed also experienced a dramatic decrease.

Apple also took this opportunity to announce they have sold over 3 million iPhone 4s. According to Apple’s AppleCare data only 0.55% of customers have reported issues. What about the people who don’t have AppleCare ? ATT are reporting that return rates for iPhone 4 is at 1.7%, while the iPhone 3GS had a return rate of 6.0%. Steve Jobs says the reports from ‘certain websites’ report the problem to be worse than it is.

Despite having a more advanced antenna, Apple have admitted iPhone 4 drops more calls than iPhone 3GS.

Apple are trying to appease current owners who purchase prior to September 30 by offering free bumpers (case). Those who already bought the bumper, you’ll get a refund.

Update
The Australian iPhone 4 launch had previously only stated as ‘late July’. Apple have confirmed the international launch date for Australia and a bunch of countries around the world is July 30th. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute.

Image credit: Engadget

Earlier this week email subscribers of TiVo Australia received the information regarding 12 new “Channels” via CASPA. I say “Channels” in inverted commas, because what they call Channels has exactly zero correlation to what Channels on TV actually mean. The indication was that they would be 12 new channels delivered over TiVo’s internet connection, essentially IPTV.

The reality is anything but. The update today is very disappointing, all that’s changed is to place TV Shows into Categories or Folders. Very, Very different to channels.

For so much hype, anticipation, the launch suffered from delays and end result is a non issue. And if your wondering if the content still costs money, the answer is yes.

Understandably things can go wrong with a launch of a brand new service, however the response “Hey guys we are working on it. Trust me when it’s good to go you will know.” isn’t really adequate. TiVo set the expectation of yesterday, if the launch has been delayed, we should get a new ETA for a revised launch date.

In the world of betas, service packs for windows aren’t exactly exciting, but somewhat a necessary process. Today Microsoft have released Service Pack 1 beta for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2. Released to the public for testing, it’s designed to iron out the bugs before the final SP1 release later this year.

After installing it earlier today, I noticed absolutely no difference. The install went smoothly, taking around half an hour with most of that occurring in the background. After a restart and a short wait for a multi-stage configuration to occur, it was all done.

Service Packs have long been relegated to a hotfix rollup rather than introducing new features, this continues with Windows 7 SP1. Windows 7 is a solid operating system that frankly doesn’t need serious changes, this is highlighted by a note on the download site.

“Please Note: This early release of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Beta is not available for home users. The SP1 Beta does not provide new end-user features, and installation is not supported by Microsoft.”

Microsoft are keen to deliver SP1 to enterprise as many still take an archaic mentality of a service pack being an indication of stability and security. Anyone paying attention would realise issues are now patched as they arise, rather than being held off for an arbitrary point in time usually 12 months after the OS release. 

The public beta is available at the TechNet Evaluation Center.

Announced at E3 earlier this month, PlayStation Plus is now available in Australia. Playstation Plus is a premium tier of the PlayStation Network for hardcore fans. Many have criticised the offering as it ending your PS Plus subscription will disable any content you’ve gained via Plus. Furthermore the FAQ also explains that the game demo is only downloadable once.. hopefully you don’t have an issue downloading or you may not see it all.

Coinciding and required with the release of PS Plus is PlayStation firmware 3.4 which must be downloaded first before using Plus. Check out the details of PlayStation Plus in Australia below.

• Games: enjoy loads of PlayStation Network games, minis and PS one classics plus premium avatars and dynamic themes, all worth at least $340* a year. You’ll also get exclusive PlayStation Store discounts and early access to demos and beta trials. Content is updated every month on PlayStation Store, so there will always be something new to enjoy. 

• Full Game Trial: try before you buy with a one-hour trial of selected PlayStation Network titles and Blu-ray Disc releases.

• Automatic Download: receive the latest PS3 system software updates, all your game updates and even game demos without lifting a finger.

• Membership Fee: AU$69.95 for a one-year membership and AU$20.95 for a 90-day membership.

Personally I can’t really see that $70 is a good deal for what’s on offer.

More info @ PlayStation Australia, still confused ? Check out the FAQ.

Not sure how I missed this, but wanted to give a massive shout out to the free RawFM iPhone app. RawFM is a dance music radio station out of Canberra that I’ve been listening to for the past few years and love their work. So if your going out tonight and not in the mood, this could just be the music you need to get you psyched for a great night out !

I do have one complaint about the app, that is that it’s not yet updated for iOS4 to run in the background. Unfortunately this means you can’t multitask and do other things on your iPhone or iPod Touch which practicing those dance moves in this mirror.

Developers.. please fix this, and fast ! While we’re on the topic of improvements, I’ll throw in the obligatory request for the iPad version, would be nice to have some equalisation or odbc connection for lyrics.

RawFM iPhone App VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

More @ RawFM

Download @ iTunes

Despite not being discussed during Apple’s WWDC keynote, the iPhone multitasking page contains confirmation that Skype video will be supported on iPhone 4. Along with Skype, other VoIP clients will also get access to use the new front facing camera.

As the screen shot above shows, Skype can run in the background and calls can come in the form of a notification.

More @ Apple

Today marks the 1 year anniversary since Bing Australia or http://bing.com.au launched. It may not have all the features of it’s US cousin, but Bing in Australia continues to do well locally. Microsoft say more than 3 million people have visited Bing in Australia every month since launch.

The most recent Bing feature to launch was Maps, but were still waiting for Travel and Shopping.

It would have been a nice touch to have a birthday-related background today, maybe for their second ?

More info @ Bing Community

Despite still not having an native iPhone application, National Australia Bank have already launched their iPad application. This comes 2 days ahead of the iPad’s Australian launch. NAB do have a web app for the iPhone, but were very late to the game, it seems they’ve learnt from their experience.

Below you’ll see a series of screen shots from the application. Beginning with the Welcome screen, this provides shortcuts to the different components of the app – Internet Banking, ATM and Branch location map and foreign exchange rates.

As a NAB customer, it’s great to have a native application and see NAB be pro-active in development. One very important thing to remember for this and other banking apps for your iPad is that you REALLY need a passcode set on your device. Applications may not and in this case don’t, have any safeguards to prevent other users accessing your account. There really should be a unique passcode, or at least the option to set one, for this and other banking apps.

A passcode for your iPad is a good idea anyway, to prevent your contacts details should it be lost. Many people would already have one set on their smartphone, but I find the iPad is much more of a communal device. Perhaps the concept of different user profiles is something Apple should add to the iPhone OS.