Just had fun publishing a story at APC on Senator Conroy's woeful 'blog', which the Australian Government is heralding as a major breakthrough in communication with the public.

The 10 sins of Senator Conroy, the blogger.

Fat City Reprise - Long Gone from Cesar Kuriyama on Vimeo.

There's an AP story doing the rounds on the web today looking at why Apple customers keep coming back for more, even when Apple ships products that are seriously flawed. Like MacBook Pros with endemic screen corruption. Or iPhone 3Gs with pathetic battery life. Or Mobile Me, which doesn't work on so many levels.

To me the answer is obvious:

Apple is to Microsoft what a car is to a horse and cart. Unless the wheels fall off the car totally and the engine of the car blows up and can't be repaired, you're not going to go back to the horse and cart. In fact, even if your car did totally blow up, you're not going to go back to the horse and cart. You're going to try to find another car.

This is exactly why Apple users keep coming back for more. Despite Apple's imperfections — which are HUGE — the product is still streets ahead of the fundamentally flawed products Microsoft churns out — Windows and Windows Mobile.

Anyone else having a problem with Firefox 3 for Mac having multiple fields at once 'focused', making it impossible to copy/clear/type new data into the contents of the field?

I make extensive use of the CMD+F (find within page), CMD+L (location bar) and CMD+K (web search) shortcuts in Firefox. But since the release of Firefox 3.0 for Mac, Firefox frequently gets confused about which field should be 'focused' (the field that is active at the time.)

Right now, for example, my location bar is focused as well as the search field. Typing CMD+K highlights the contents of the field selects all the text in the field as you'd expect, but typing something new into the field doesn't actually enter any data. You have to mouse up to the field and click on it, which defeats the purpose of having keyboard shortcuts in the first place.

Here's a screenshot of the problem in action — both the location bar and the web search field are focused/active, so typing a value doesn't have any result unless I actually click in one of the fields.

It's driving me barmy, and, even worse, I can't find any mention of it from other users on the web. Perhaps I'm searching for the wrong keywords, or perhaps nobody uses keyboard shortcuts in Firefox for Mac as much as I do.

I will say one thing though: quitting Firefox and restarting it fixes the problem for a little while. After some hours of use, it comes back again. I haven't been able to pin down the variables involved with it happening — whether it's a certain number of browser tabs open, multiple browser windows, or what.

9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

Gosh I loathe this revolting money grubbing fitness chain.

Gym giant Fitness First has taken a former member, who could not work out due to medical problems, to court - all for the sake of $200.

Source: SMH.com.au

I was a member of Fitness First in Park St, Sydney CBD. I was disgusted by how filthy the changerooms were — the showers were visibly dirty, had a strong fungal smell, there were disused bandaids floating around and human fluids (saliva, mucus etc) around that hadn't been cleaned away for days. Unfortunately I hadn't inspected the changerooms etc before signing up to the contract. [Read more →]

Money quote: "Introducing the Vista Mac…"

I've said it once and I'll say it again… many aspects of Japanese culture are verrrrrry… kookie.

For example, this new trend for lengthy videos of pretty girls staring at the camera.

Apparently the idea is to help socially anxious guys get used to making eye contact with pretty girls. Personally, I'm not so sure that the best treatment for this affliction is more staring at the computer screen, but who am I to say? I'm not an expert in prettygirlnoneyecontactitis. Though I am pretty sure I've had conjunctivitis at least once in my life.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES! Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has it SO right in his article, Think Before you Voicemail. I could not agree more! Voicemail is a horrible relic of the 90s from an era before everyone had email at their fingertips, and it must DIE!

My particular tactic at work is to have a 90 second voice greeting that really, really, slowly and laboriously tells people that I really prefer email to voicemail, and repeats my email address numerous times, including spelling it out in full. And if people suffer through that all the way, I say: "I am often away from my desk or travelling and may not get your voicemail for days or weeks … however I have a mobile phone with email, so that is always the best way to reach me … but leave your message, if you want."

Comically, the only people who ever leave me messages are bubbly junior PR people who are ringing to follow up to check that I got such and such a press release. Clearly, they don't care whether I got the message or not, as long as they can tick the box on their client billing form that says they followed up with me.

Another good thing I discovered for avoiding voicemail in my life: on my particular mobile phone plan (Optus Blackberry $79 cap plan), the Optus SurePage service can be billed into the cap. So, even though each operator-answered message that is taken down and SMSed to me costs $0.85, that can be billed as part of my $300 per month cap value. And since I never spend anywhere near $300 on my voice calls, those $0.85 pager-style text messages don't cost me any real money.

I'm sure it's not the same on all plans, and since it's a premium Optus service, I almost wonder if it's an oversight by Optus, but I'm glad it's that way, because now I never have to listen to voicemail on my mobile any more either — I just get an SMS with the message and a number I can click on to call back if necessary.

In short, I HATE VOICEMAIL, and even if it was massively overhauled and sent to my email and stuff, I'd still hate it, because listening to the messages and transcribing people's numbers, etc, takes up valuable time, and I wish they'd just email me instead.

It's nice for Michael Arrington — who is hugely influential in tech — to have come out and declared voicemail dead.

This is why I love BRAN, the tech podcast by Aussie journos Angus Kidman, Nathan Taylor and Roulla Yiaccoumi: a quote from the latest episode (90): "Every site Sensis has rolled out is … let's not mince words… TOTAL SHIT…"

I couldn't agree more. I was amazed at what abject shit the new version of Whereis is compared to Google Maps.  Yellow Pages is equally useless… I hate the way when you're trying to find a plumber in your area, the first 50 results are always massive contractor companies with a 1800 number that cover the entire state. The sooner Google's business directories supplant telco directories, the better. Google gets search, and that's what directories are all about from the end user's perspective.

Speaking of search, Sensis' shit search engine… why do they even bother? Microsoft can't make the smallest dent in people's loyalty to Google, and that's with them having full control of Windows so they can sucker in people who use the default settings in Internet Explorer.

Why doesn't Sensis just shrivel up and die, in the face of the superior competition?

I love the ABC's new Q&A program. The public Q&A with Kevin Rudd was one hour of thoroughly interesting watching (and it also made obvious how good an orator Kevin Rudd is, but how that is also married with intellect and logic… and the fact that he has the guts to get in front of an audience, take unscreened questions, unlike John "no worm" Howard.)

But the funniest part was the closing credits 'mashup'…