Podcast Episode #53– The Catchup
Posted Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 4:20 pm by Jason Cartwright
After many months of hiatus, the techAU Podcast is back in action ! Episode 53 of the podcast is now available. In this episode I discuss the following stories:
Catch up
- North America International Auto Show – Ford January
- Top Geek
- techAU expanded, new writers
- Started Constructiv (see below)
Sponsor – ReGadget
They buy old gadgets such as mobile phones, laptops, consoles, etc. for an instant cash price. All the user has to do is answer a few questions, receive a prepaid shipping bag and post the item to ReGadget.
Example – You can get up to $270.52 for a Samsung Galaxy S
- You don’t pay for postage
- Portal players are still unable to play co-op or use steam account.
New iMacs released
- CPU / GPU upgrade
- Thunderbolt on-board
- Still has USB2.0
Analog TV Switch off
- Most of VIC now Digital only.
- Buy a new TV or get a set-top-box
- All to be switched off by 2013
- 700Mhz spectrum used for 4G mobile networks
Review: Sonos Music System
- Multi-room, play different audio on each or all the same in party mode.
- iPad / iPhone applications
- Play music from local / internet streams
- Alarm, sleep timer.
Sony’s PSN is STILL down.
- More than 2 weeks (April 21st to May 7th)
- Missed their own self-imposed deadline
- Compensation – 1 month free of PSN Plus + game.
- Will you pull your credit card when PSN returns ?
- Portal 2 users got screwed.
Constructiv
- Change the way products are developed
- Looking for developers / advisors
- Raising funding
- Lynda.com for training
- http://constructiv.co
Coming up
- CeBit & ReMix conferences
- Sydney 30th May – 2nd June, catch up for a coffee
Feedback
- Send links to your video questions
- Check out the website – http://techAU.tv
- Follow me on twitter – @techAU
Download
techAU Podcast Episode 53 – HD (614MB)
What’d u do today ? I built a techAU Merch Store !
Posted Monday, January 3, 2011 at 4:59 pm by Jason Cartwright
The Christmas holidays have provided an opportunity to take a breath and consider new ways to monetise the site. At first I considered donations like many other do, but then decided a you guys should get something out of the deal as well. This leads to the launch of the techAU Merchandise Store.
If you like the content on techAU and want to support its future development, then head over to http://techAU.tv/store and buy one of the techAU branded products. There’s plenty to choose from, coasters, t-shirts, stickers, hoodies, key rings and even a calendar made from tech photos. On each purchase, techAU collects 10%, there is an option to increase the percentage, but this would increase the overall cost, so 10% it is.
The techAU Merchandise Store uses zazzle.com.au as the backend. If you’ve not heard of it before it’s definitely worth checking out. It’s pretty simple to setup a store and create new products using your images and text. If you get in before the end of today (3/1/2011), you’ll get 20% knocked off as part of a new years promotion.. so be quick!
There’ll continue to be new products added over time, also happy to take requests and suggestions.
Stop reading and start buying @ http://techAU.tv/store
Happy New Year from techAU. Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!
Posted Saturday, January 1, 2011 at 2:56 pm by Jason Cartwright
By now most of our hangovers from last night’s NYE celebrations should have subsided. With 2011 now officially underway, I’d like to take a second to reflect on the success that was 2010. Last year was undoubtedly the biggest yet for techAU its continued growth and participation from readers continues to amaze me.
Let me throw some stats at you, in 2010 techAU..
Website/Podcast
- 235,293 unique visitors
- 6.15 Million hits (68.6% Windows, 18% Mac)
- 340GB bandwidth consumed
- Podcast episode 41 downloaded 14,020 times (HD version: 11,392)
- 46,665 YouTube channel views
- 6,042 Flickr views
- 2,127 Twitter followers
- 143 Facebook Likes
Most successful story
10 minutes with Windows Phone 7 simulator unlocked
- 31,988 views
- Video 1: 50.5k views, Video 2: 24.4k views
- Picked up by Engadget, cNet, Buzz Out Loud
Featured on TWiT
Episode 228: The TWiT Of The Decade – http://twit.tv/228
Episode 244: Pork Chops and Apple Sauce – http://www.twit.tv/244
As you can see it’s been a phenomenal year, made so by you, the techAU community that share stories, tell friends and family and help spread the word. I appreciate all the time that goes into leaving comments, questions and feedback and especially those who continually allow me to crowd source solutions.
Thank you and Happy New Years !
Regards
Jason Cartwright
Podcast Episode #52 – Merry Christmas
Posted Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 9:31 pm by Jason Cartwright
NBN update
- Governments Business Plan released
- Entry-level wholesale plan of $24 expected to be $52 ?
- 8 year build, now 9.5
- Opposition still opposes, what happens next election
Skype down
- Skype down for hours
- Internet goes crazy
- Twitter over capacity
CES2011
- January 6th – 9th 2011
- Technology previewed for release later in 2011
- Big themes – Tablets
- http://www.cesweb.org/
North American International Auto Show
- - January 9th – 12th
- Watch techAU.tv for coverage and #NAIAS
- Guest of Ford
Year in Review
- Trip to America, visited TWiT, San Diego Zoo, Hot air balloon ride in Phoenix, Helicopter ride over Grand Canyon, week in San Francisco, bought iPad. Tech.Ed on the Gold Coast.
- New tech this year – Kinect, Boxee Box, iPhone 4, iPad, Audio Mixer, Logitech Pure-Fi Express Plus, Canon 500D, Angry Birds, Words with Friends.
- Kogan TV for my parents (first TV online)
Survey
Download
AustDomains down for 9.5 hrs, sorry.
Posted Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 8:35 pm by Jason Cartwright
Unfortunately today techAU had its longest outage since launching. After around 9 long hours, the site is finally back up and running. Obviously having the site offline for any length of time is incredibly frustrating and frankly unnacceptable. I want to make this clear, today’s downtime was due to issues with the current host AustDomains, not with techAU. I’ve decided to call them out in an effort to get them to share more information on the issue.
Despite having various social networks available to them, AustDomains left customers in the dark, with no response to emails, phone calls and worst of all no ETA. During the outage many other AustDomains customers began discussing the outage online, without a whisper from AustDomains. This is a major failing in customer service and I sincerely hope they use today’s outage as an example of how not to handle a disaster.
At 8:10pm customers received an email from AustDomains giving a vague explanation of what occurred today.
Dear Customers,
Customer Outage – Resolved, 22 June 2010
Unfortunately we have been experiencing some packet loss of both our primary and secondary data links. This affected most of the network, client websites/services, including our support phone and email systems. This outage meant we could not provide a prompt notice, either directly or via our website.
This issue has since been resolved and safe guards been put in place to prevent future reoccurrence.
We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this would have caused.
techAU is investigating alternate solutions to ensure this doesn’t happen ever again. Once again, I’d like to apologise to our readers.
