Anyway, check out the questions and my answers below. If you do notice something is wrong let me know and I’ll try to fix it up. If you haven’t picked up on it yet, my answers are highlighted in the question already.

Lecture 1

1. The automatic connection between various Bluetooth devices creates a(n) piconet, also called a wireless personal area network (WPAN).
2. A WLAN is an extension of a wired LAN, connecting to it through a device called a(n) wireless access point.
3. Wireless Application Protocol version 2.0 (WAP2) provides a standard way to transmit, format, and display Internet data for small wireless devices such as cell phones.
4. Digital Convergence refers to the power of digital devices to combine voice, video, and text processing capabilities, as well as to be connected to business and home networks and the Internet.
5. A(n) Universal Handset is a 1.5-pound device that allows military personnel in the field to communicate through a variety of methods using wireless technologies.
6. Industrial control motes are remote sensors that can connect to a WLAN, then collect data and transmit it to a central location.
7. True or False: Bluetooth and WLAN 802.11b/g devices both operate in the same radio frequency, potentially resulting in interference between such devices.
8. True or False: Wireless devices emit high levels of RF while being used.

Lecture 2

1. The number of times a cycle occurs within one second equals the frequency of a wave.
2. A signal unit that represents two bits is known as a dibit.
3. The height of a carrier wave is known as the amplitude and can be measured in volts (electrical pressure).
4. Phase modulation (PM) changes the starting point of the cycle, while the amplitude and frequency of the carrier remain constant.
5. Phase shift keying (PSK) is a binary modulation technique, similar to phase modulation, in which the transmitter varies the starting point of the wave.
6. Spread spectrum is a technique that takes a narrow band signal and spreads it over a broader portion of the radio frequency band.
7. In FHSS, the sequence of changing frequencies is called the hopping code.
8. A(n) Barker code (or chipping code) is a particular sequence of 1s and 0s that has properties that make it ideal for modulating radio waves, as well as for being detected correctly by the receiver.

Lecture 3

1. A(n) amplifier essentially increases the amplitude of an RF sign.
2. Half-duplex transmission sends data in both directions, but only one way at a time.
3. True or False: Telephone systems use a type of switching known as packet switching.
4. Packet switching requires that the data transmission be broken into small units called packets.
5. A(n) directional antenna radiates the electromagnetic waves in one direction only, and can help reduce or eliminate the effect of multipath distortion if there is a clear line of sight between the two antennas.
6. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) serves as the primary regulatory agency for telecommunications.
7. The radio frequency spectrum is the entire range of all radio frequencies that exist.
8. Adaptive array processing replaces a traditional antenna with an array of antenna elements.

Lecture 4

1. A(n) isotropic radiator is a theoretical perfect sphere that radiates power equally in all directions.
2. Directional antennas are used when you need to transmit a signal in one direction only.
3. In free space loss, RF waves tend to spread away from the source of the signal (the antenna).
4. The length of a single RF sine wave, or the wavelength, is what determines the size of an antenna.
5. Smart antennas “know” where the mobile receiver is, and can track it and focus the RF energy in that particular direction to avoid wasting energy and to prevent interference with other antennas.
6. In most wireless communications applications, one transmitter communicates with several mobile clients. This is called a(n) point-to-multipoint wireless link.
7. The space between two antennas would be more accurately represented by something similar to an ellipse. This elliptical region is called the Fresnel zone.
8. A(n) Spectrum analyzer displays the signal amplitude and frequency, and can also detect interference in a particular frequency or channel.

Lecture 5

1. FIR uses a modulation scheme called  4-pulse position modulation (4-PPM), in which information is conveyed by the position of a pulse within a time slot.
2. At the heart of the Bluetooth RF layer is a single radio transmitter/receiver (transceiver). This single tiny chip is called a Bluetooth radio module.
3. A group of piconets in which connections exist between different piconets is called a(n) scatternet.
4. In sniff mode, a slave device listens to the piconet master at a reduced rate so that it uses less power.
5. The upper ZigBee layers include mechanisms used by the devices to join a network, which is called association.
6. The superframe is a mechanism for managing transmission time in a piconet.
7. Encryption is the process of encoding communications, and ensures that the transmissions cannot be easily intercepted and decoded.
8. Sequential freshness is a security service used by the receiving device that ensures that the same frames will not be transmitted more than once.

Lecture 6

1. The WiMedia Alliance was formed to support the development of any necessary higher-layer protocols and software specifications for 802.15.3 and to perform various other administrative functions.
2. Quality-of-service (QOS) capabilities allow devices to request more channel access time in order to prioritize high-volume, time-sensitive traffic, such as voice stream.
3. The piconet coordinator (PNC) is the device that provides all of the basic communications timing in a piconet.
4. The frame check sequence (FCS) is a 32-bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC) field, a common technique for detecting data transmission errors.
5. Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks flood a Bluetooth device with so many frames that it is unable to communicate.
6. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a symmetric key encryption mechanism introduced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States.
7. Hand-off is the ability of a device to move from one master or PNC to another without getting disconnected from the network in a network that extends beyond the communications range of each device that controls the communications.
8. Spectrum conflict is the potential for technologies using the same frequency bands to interfere with each other to the extent that they sometimes perform poorly when used within close range of each other.

Lecture 7

1. A(n) Mini PCI is a small card that is functionally equivalent to a standard PCI expansion card.
2. The AP will automatically select the highest possible data rate for transmission, depending on the strength and quality of the signal. This process is called dynamic rate selection.
3. The 802.11 standard defines a local area network that provides cable-free data access for clients that are either mobile or in a fixed location at a rate of either 1 or 2 Mbps, using either diffused infrared or RF transmission.
4. Even though it contains data, a 802.11 frame’s size is not measured in bits but in time slots.
5. One type of channel access method is polling. With this method, each computer is sequentially polled, or asked if it wants to transmit.
6. 802.11b standard power management allows the mobile client’s NIC to be off as much as possible to conserve battery life but still not miss out on data transmissions.
7. In the 802.11b standard, management frames are used to set up the initial communications between a client and the AP.
8. The Distributed coordination function interframe space (DIFS) is a standard time interval during which all clients must wait between transmissions of data frames.

Lecture 8

1. IEEE 802.11a uses the Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) band.
2. With an 802.11a WLAN, each AP can use one of 8 available channels.
3. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) primary function is to split a high-speed digital signal into several slower signals running in parallel.
4. True or False: The IEEE 802.11g standard specifies that it operates in the same frequency band as 802.11b
5. Wireless bridges are designed to connect two wired networks or to extend the range of a WLAN.
6. Authentication is a process that verifies that the client device has permission to access the network.
7. WPA2 is the version of WPA that has been certified by the IEEE to be compatible with IEEE 802.11i.
8. Virtual private networks (VPNs) use an encrypted connection to create a virtual tunnel between two points across a public or corporate network.

Lecture 9

1. A(n) broadband transmission sends multiple signals at different frequencies.
2. Scintillation is defined as the temporal and spatial variations in light intensity caused by atmospheric turbulence.
3. Local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) is a fixed broadband technology that can provide a wide variety of wireless services.
4. True or False: Multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS) is a fixed broadband wireless technology that has many similarities to LMDS.
5. A data transmission to or from a single device is called a(n) burst in the 802.16 standard.
6. Latency is the amount of time delay that it takes a packet to travel from source to destination device.
7. Jitter is the maximum delay variation between two consecutive packets over a period of time.
8. RSA is an algorithm developed in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman.

Lecture 10

1. Short Message Services (SMS) allows for the delivery of short, text-based messages between wireless devices, such as cellular telephones and pagers.
2. The mobile telecommunications switching office (MTSO) is the link between the cellular network and the wired telephone world, and controls all transmitters and base stations in the cellular network.
3. 1G technology is based on the Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS).
4. True or False: W-CDMA adds a packet-switched data channel to a circuit-switched voice channel.
5. A WML document is called a deck that contains one or more blocks, known as cards.
6. The Java programming language was developed by Sun Microsystems as an object-oriented language used for general-purpose business programming, as well as interactive Web sites.
7. The single largest factor limiting the development of 3G is spectrum.
8. Low earth orbit (LEO) satellites circle the Earth at an altitude of 200 to 900 miles (321 to 1,448 kilometers).

Lecture 11

1. One class of active tags is called beacons because they transmit on a periodic basis, without receiving an interrogation from a reader.
2. The mobile telecommunications switching office (MTSO) is the link between the cellular network and the wired telephone world and controls all transmitters and base stations in the cellular network.
3. Sensory tags, as their name indicates, can be equipped with thermal, gas, smoke, pressure, and a variety of other kinds of sensors to monitor and record environmental conditions, liquid volume levels, or attempts to tamper with a product.
4. With EPCs, companies will be able to acquire the manufacturer’s name over the Internet using a service from EPCglobal Inc. called Object Name Service (ONS).
5. HF RFID transmission uses a protocol called slotted terminating adaptive protocol (STAC), in which the tags reply within randomly selected positions or time intervals, referred to as slots.
6. After the destroy password is transmitted by the reader, the tag is permanently disabled and can never be read or written to again.
7. True or False: In hospitals, RFID tags in a patient’s identification bracelet can provide vital information that cannot be easily misplaced.
8. A(n) blocker tag is a device that can be used to simulate the presence of a virtually infinite number of tags.

Lecture 12

1. True or False: Industry experts agree that access to corporate data from almost anywhere is the greatest advantage of wireless technology.
2. Wireless VoIP phones, the telephone handsets that connect to a WLAN’s access point (AP), enable you to use the WLAN for regular telephone calls.
3. Wireless VoIP SOHO routers can be connected to a DSL or cable modem and provide both a WLAN and telephone services through the user’s Internet connection.
4. True or False: The human factor in implementing wireless technology is sometimes a significant obstacle.
5. Upfront costs are costs that are necessary to start a project.
6. A(n) Upfront is a detailed planning document that is sent to potential vendors with precise specifications for the products and services that the organization intends to buy.
7. A(n) wireless application service provider (WASP) can design and create a wireless application to run on a specific range of devices.
8. A(n) help desk is a central point of contact for users who need assistance using technology.

Perpetual – perpetually – In a perpetual manner; Seeming to never end; endlessly; constantly
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/perpetually

Beta – A software release is the distribution (whether public or private) of an initial or upgraded version of a computer software product. The software engineers and company doing the work decide on how to distribute the program or system, or changes to that pre downloads and compact discs.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_(software_development)

Perpetual Beta – Perpetual beta is a term used to describe software or a system which remains at the beta development stage for an extended or even indefinite period of time. It is often used by developers in order to allow them to constantly release new features that might not be fully tested.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_beta

Perpetual Beta in Web 2.0 is used to describe an online service which remains under constant development. At great example of this was Gmail.

Google’s Gmail service launched on the 1st of April, 2004 as an invite only service. I remained as an invite only service for nearly 3 years before becoming open to the public (7th of February, 2007). It was still labeled a Beta for another 2 years until the lifted the Beta labelled along with the rest of the Google Apps Suite on the 7th of July, 2009.

During its time in Beta Google constantly introduced new features and changed its services. Introducing new languages, enabled IMAP support, increasing the mailbox size, integration with Google Docs, custom themes, Google labs and many more. Click here for a history of Gmail.

So why label something a Beta? Generally if something is in Beta you can expect some things not to work, and problems arise. This is all part of harnessing the collective intelligence to develop the product, find bugs and provided feedback to make a better product. Without having a web 2.0 application or service you will be stuck in the traditional software life cycle which can cost more, take longer and not be as effective.

So why take the Beta label off after so many years? From an Infrastructure perspective you don’t deploy products that are in Beta. You deploy products that a ready that have no expected bugs or problems. Google understood this concept so after around 5 years the finally took the Beta label of. This changes how a business can look at a product and it will allow business to evaluate Gmail and related apps as a potential solution. Previously this would have been ruled out straight away because it wasn’t ready, it was in ‘beta’ and a business can’t afford to have systems that are un-reliable.

So while the main service of Gmail isn’t in Beta anymore there are still more features on going. Google introduced Google Labs which is an opt-in only service that lest to add features and functionality that are in a ‘Beta’ phase. I actually use some of these myself such as multiple inboxes, offline synchronisation, youtube preview in e-mails just to name a few. Once these have been tested enough they might make it to the core functionality of Gmail. So this is an example of a Web 2.0 service that is on a constant Perpetual Beta.

You can download a copy of at Scribd. If the link doesn’t work or you can’t download it let me know and I’ll see if I can e-mail it to you or post it up on here. It places all the information on a nice landscape page!

I’ve copied some of the text below to give you an idea of how it is set out.

Roles

Scrum Team

• Team is cross-functional and consists of 5-9 people
• There are no set project roles within the team
• Team defines tasks and assignments
• Team is self-organizing and self-managing
• Maintains the Sprint Backlog
• Conducts the Sprint Review

Product Owner (PO)

• Accountable for product success
• Defines all product features
• Responsible for prioritizing product features
• Maintains the Product Backlog
• Insures team working on highest valued features

Scrum Master (SM)

• Holds daily 15 minute team meeting (Daily Scrum)
• Removes obstacles
• Shields the team from external interference
• Maintains the Sprint Burndown Chart
• Conducts Sprint Retrospective at the end of a Sprint
• Is a facilitator not a manager

Artifacts

Product Backlog – (PB)

• List of all desired product features
• List can contain bugs, and non-functional items
• Product Owner responsible for prioritizing
• Items can be added by anyone at anytime
• Each item should have a business value assigned
• Maintained by the Product Owner

Sprint Backlog – (SB)

• To-do list (also known as Backlog item) for the Sprint
• Created by the Scrum Team
• Product Owner has defined as highest priority

Burndown Chart – (BC)

• Chart showing how much work remaining in a Sprint
• Calculated in hours remaining
• Maintained by the Scrum Master daily

Release Backlog – (RB)

• Same as the Product Backlog. May involve one or more sprints dependent on determined Release date

Update: For some reason or another people are have problem getting to the Scrum Cheat Sheet. I would recommend you try and get it from the above link but for those who can’t I’ve decided to upload it here –> Scrum Cheat Sheet <–

The first was using a video camera, and just recording the presentation.

The second also used a video camera to record the room, however this presenter used a PowerPoint for the basis of the training session. I’ve been thinking of the best way to keep this together. Unlike the first sessions the ‘video’ from the second session wasn’t that valuable but the audio and PowerPoint presentation is.

I wanted a way to combine all of this together and thus I came to a feature I’ve never used before in PowerPoint. The idea is fairly simple but you can save the slides as pictures (File > Save as Pictures).

I’ve also seen the ‘Save as Movie’ option and ‘Save as Web Page’, but in this case .jpg’s of the slides worked out.

I’ve taken the Video of the entire training session as the baseline line. I’ve then dropped the .jpg image over the video feed as required. Some slides go for longer or shorter which I can easily change with Adobe Premiere Pro (or similar software).

This also allows me to take down the .jpg in between slides where there was discussion. Overall I was fairly pleased with the outcome.

I’ve seen other methods of doing this, such as having the PowerPoint slides on half the screen and then the video feed on the other half, but on this occasion this seems like a nice fit.

The next training session is next week, which I’m planning on recording a screen capture (recording the users PC) of the entire session as the sessions will be demonstrations on ‘live’ sites where the content is dynamic and wont be in a PowerPoint slide (flicking through windows, watching the screen change, etc).

I wont be able to show you any of the work I’ve done though due to the training sessions being an internal thing at work, but if you have ideas how the best way to record ‘training sessions’ is or you know of any other useful tips and tricks, even software to make the job easier I would be interested to know.

Upon getting the beta invite in an e-mail because I joined up with the pre-registration (by the way, not everyone who pre-registered has received an invite), I logged in and got presented with the Welcome screen. It very sleek and gets right to the point.

Login Screen for Guvera Beta

From this point you have 3 main options presented to you:

Random: If you don’t know what your looking for, click on Random. It will ‘randomly’ take you to a channel where you can see what songs are being offered.

Browse: If you want to look by artist, or by channel. (Browsing by artist isn’t enabled at this stage).

Search: If you know what you want, just type it in – (I think everyone knows how a search box works). One nice thing about the search is that it brings up a small photo of the album, song title, artist and gives you the ability to preview the song.

Channels is where it all happens!

Yep, That is right it is all about finding a channel where you can see a list of songs. So far on all the channels I’ve seen you can preview a song for 30 seconds, stream the whole song or what most people I think want – download the full song for free.

So how does it work? Well each channel is sponsored. For example a company or business can set up their own channel that has there branding on it. Additional links and information that is targeted towards the user. Each channel has had a different look, but have the sleek look which Guvera has going from the welcome page.

Your File: A module that shows you the album cover, artist, song, duration, size of the song. (At the moment this doesn’t dynamically update to the song you have previewed or clicked on to stream and not all of the fields are populated like duration and size).

Your Credits: Shows you how many credits you have and how to get more. (At the start you might not have that much but once you re-fill in all the details you did when you pre-registered this increases)

Playlist: A standard set of media controls to play music.

Music: The list of music being offered in a nice grid view (Love grid views). Title, Artist, Duration with button to Preview, Stream and Download. This is essential the main window where you do all you need to do.

Links: Sponsored links such as information, promotion or competitions you can entered provided by the channel sponsor.

Do you really get songs for Free?

Yes, you do. You get credit allocated to you and you can use this up. For example I had 1.60 worth of credit after I updated my profile on each one of the channels I visited. Once I downloaded a song at one channel I had .6 credit remaining. However on the other channels I still have 1.6 credits.

I downloaded a song and got the full length .mp3. Here are some more of the interesting details for those of you who are interested:

Size: 5.5 MB
Bit Rate: 256 kbps
Sample Rate: 44.100 kHz
Format: MPEG-1, Layer 3
Encoded with: LAME3.98

Negatives / Bugs / Feedback

As it is a ‘BETA’ you are to expect bugs, and problems to occur. The idea is to give a small group a test at the system and to address issues found before it goes main stream. Often a users first impression lasts and it could taint them from using it in future. If you are a BETA tester you should keep this in mind, that what you are seeing isn’t the full product. So here is my feedback:

No ability to give feedback: Ironically, I couldn’t find a submit bug/forums/e-mail button anywhere to submit any problems I was having. This is the main reason I’m doing a blog post. I’m hoping this gets back to them and so they can make some improvements.

No ID3 Tags on MP3′s: This would have to be the number 1 problem I have. The mp3 I downloaded (at around 220 Kb/s) had a massive file name that doesn’t describe the song or the artist. I also made the assumption there would have to be ID3 Tags that would handle this instead. This is not the case. There is pretty much no way to identify the song you have downloaded (not unless you manually edit the file name or insert ID3 tags yourself).

Updating Profile / Favourites: There is a fair amount of questions and I had to refill in all this after I had done this to pre-register. It seems like double handling and I don’t like it. Also when it comes to your date of birthday details it actually doesn’t save this correctly. For example my date of birthday is 1 day out, as after I save it and return to the details screen it has entered in the previous day I was born.

Your Song Box: This doesn’t dynamically update to the song you are playing or have selected on the channel.

Multiple Windows: You really can’t go opening multiple windows. You can’t for example up 3 different channels and save those channels to your favourites. It will only do it for the last one you opened and you will soon see that the 3 pages you have loaded up are all the same instead of 3 different channels. You basically have a ‘single click, one window only mentality’.

Address Verification: Not sure how this is meant to happen and there is no information on this. This needs to be expanded and explained further. There also needs to be a ‘why do we need to do this’, ‘why do you need this information’ thing going through my head.

Forums / Chat Room: I would like to see a forum \ chat room made available. I might not use these features myself but I was looking for a way to communicate with other users. Imagine if a channel had its own chatroom available or a forum? It may be a way to engage the audience and create a community where people will come back (not just to download songs). This would provide greater exposure for the sponsors and Guvera and a reason for the user to stay connected. With the targeted information (such as location), it could be easy for a Brisbane radio station to get people in the Brisbane area talking to each other…. – I’m sure this idea can be expanded more and thought out more if it hasn’t already.

Credits: Credits look strangle similar to dollars. I feel like I want to call the dollars or money. I also don’t know how much a song will cost me (money term there). Perhaps this could get looked at. EG: I have 1.5 credits meaning I have 1.5 songs. I have no idea how I get half a song, or how my credits will increase now that I’ve updated my profile. I bit more explanation here guys would be great. That grid view of songs would be good to see how much credits a song costs. I’m assuming all songs cost the same, but maybe they dont?  If this gets a bit more of a look, that would be great.

Conclusion:

Guvera, does what it set out to achieve. I was able to download a song legally as an mp3. It was easy to navigate around and find the song I wanted, however once I got the song on my computer I expected more (ID3 Tags). This has actually led me to deleting the song I download so it won’t ruin my music collection rather than re-naming it myself. There are a few bugs with the site and things that need to get looked at, but see potential.

The music being offered isn’t ancient, but it also isn’t the latest stuff out there. Guvera is working on extending this further, and I look forward to it. I’m keen to see how things pan out and I would like to encourage people to pre-register but at this stage I wouldn’t recommend it to other people in this BETA stage.

Oh and ‘hi’ to the guys working there at Guvera, I believe your office is just down the road in Robina, QLD. I would like to see this work out for you guys, as support local talent is always nice.

Update 14/1/2010:

I’ve received some nice Feedback from Guvera via twitter which I would like to say thanks for taking my thoughts on board. I’ve noticed a ‘report a bug’ button. Once there are more changes, I’ll be willing to go through it all again.

I heard that Virgin? has this enabled for free.

Telstra up until last Saturday, there simply was no option to do this. ZDNet Australia (amongst other news sites) have a post on this if your interesting in the finer details you can check out over here or jump straight to the comment on the Telstra’s forum here.

Now it is enabled it is easy to get working.

1. Plug your iPhone into your PC and open up iTunes
2. If you don’t get prompted to update your carrier settings you will have to do this manually
3. To do this manually, click on your iPhone and click “Check For Updates”
4. It should then prompt you to download these settings, do that and your set.

If your like me though, this didn’t work. I would click on the ‘Set Up Internet Tethering’ option and I would get a prompt telling me to call Telstra or go to their website.

The problem was fairly simple, but out of my control. To get data on the iPhone previously I’ve had to change the APN settings to telstra.wap as telstra.iph didn’t work. Now to check this, if you set your APN settings to telstra.iph (should be this by default) try and browse the internet on the phone. If you can’t do this (like I couldn’t months ago when I first got the iPhone), I manually changed this to telstra.wap as I knew data worked on my previous phone.

After getting a called escalated to level 2 technically support. We tried the basic things and we both couldn’t figure it out until I remembered what I had to do get data to work on the phone. The guy on the phone reset my network profile / enabled the settings and I was then instantly able to browse data on the phone through the telstra.wap APN Carrier setting, and thus when I clicked on setup Internet tethering this just worked.

Now I’ve got the option and the technical staff at telstra can help out the next caller better to. Let me know how you go!

On a side note, OPTUS ? seriously $10 to get this feature enabled. If I went on a <$30 BYO phone plan with you which included 150mb+ data and $150 worth of phone calls. I’m not willing to pay another $10 for nothing! Lift your game. Did I mention your mobile network doesn’t compare to Telstra’s in terms of coverage/speed/performance (as much as it pains me to say it), why would you place greater hurdles upon your users?

So now that you have an overview of what Google Wave is (if you didn’t know already). Just send a reply back in this post and I’ll go about sending you an invite as soon as I can.

Note: At this stage the only way to get access to Google Wave is through an invite, so please only reply back if you are interested as there are many people who are still trying to get in.

Ronald Azuma in 1997 gave the following definitions on Augmented Reality:

combines real and virtual

is interactive in real time

is registered in 3D

With this in mind and wanting to use information available on the net, I was surprised at how many applications where available on the iPhone. The first one I used was called NearestWiki.

NearestWiki once open finds out where you are located, and then searches for all wikipedia articles that have been geo-tagged with a location in a 20 mile radius (roughly 32 kilometers). Once it has this locations loaded you can then navigate 360 degrees to find out what articles around you and how far they are.

NearestWiki being used outside a QUT lecture room.

As you can see from my example standing outside a lecture room at QUT. You can see that it has picked up an article about QUT itself, which is 190M away. Yes I was at QUT but it was fairly accurate in saying that the heart of QUT was a little bit away.

It also picked up the GABBA as we know it, but officially know as the Brisbane Cricket Ground. Having just drove past this I could say that I had driven further than 1.54 Km. If your wondering why there is a difference it is because it directly 1.54 Km away and doesn’t take into account how you would actually need to get there (and I’m okay with that).

As you scan around you can pick up on the Roma Street Parklands in the opposite directions, Parliament House which is next door to QUT and so on. So how can you use this to help you out?

Well provided you had phone reception, and could get a data connection on your phone. If you were close to a ‘tourist attraction’ or something that has a wikipedia article you could turn on this application and identify things yourself. You could locate nearby interesting things you may not have come across and if something caught your interest you can simple tap on article and it loads up the full wikipedia article for you to read.

You are now your own tourist guide? You are empowered with information instantly and easily. You are using information in ‘Real Time’ to interact with the ‘Real World’ and this is just the start.

This application only provided data on wikipedia articles so I thought I would see if I could find another application to find a place to eat or drink.

The first one I’ve tried and just briefly (no more than 5 minutes) demonstrates potential was called buUuk.

With a similar interface and concept as I said before, this locates places that have been added to the database (unsure if it is is buUuk’s or a shared one) and displays them in a similar fashion.

The buUuk application being used (spinning around) to locate the nearest palces to eat or drink.

One thing that looks nice is that not only do you get a list of places you see user ratings. Not only that you can rate the places yourself which really empowers you with data in real time.

With a click of a button you can see details of the place (even a button to make a phone call to them), user reviews you can read, prices, address and a whole lot more information.

So what are its downfalls?

• There are a lot of places that don’t turn up as they haven’t been added.
• User participation is fairly low from what I can tell.
• Heavily relies on the ‘Network Effect’
• With small participation reviews could be skewed or biased made by owners
• You need an device that has this enabled (are there any others besides the iPhone 3Gs)?
• Internet connectivity on your mobile device (often expense)

The nearest places to eat or drink that buUuk has found. A lot of places missing at the moment, but over time will this improve?

Applications:

• WordPress – allows me to login to my website and write a blog entry, etc
• TwitterFon – allows you to post a twitter update, search tweets, see that latest trending topics
• Shazam – Can listen to a song for 5 – 10 seconds, and then identify it – then you can youtube the video, twitter it, etc
• Remote – An app from Apple that I had to download, allows you to control any iTunes with your iPhone
• VLCRemFree – An app that allows you to control VLC player on a pc (some manual configuration on your pc and with the application itself)
• Koredoko – Displays all the photos you’ve taken on your iPhone on a map! This is what geo-tagging photos is meant for!
• 9-Toolbox -Inclinometer, Tip Calculator, Load, Date Calculator, etc (A useful one to have ready)
• FAC Free – Fake a phone call on your iPhone (you can think of the reasons)
• Ping Lite – Allows you to ping another pc/ subnet, trace route, telnet interface (not for everyone, but I’ve found it useful)
• Road Trip LE – Monitors your fuel usage/costs and plots them (haven’t used this enough to get a feel for it, but seems good so far)

Games:

• Blowfish
• Paper Toss
• TapDefense
• BailoutBen
• GeoDefense Lite
• ZA! Free
• StickWars Lite
• Tap Tap Revenge 2
• Airport Mania

Other:

• Created a Google Calander Shortcut
• Created a Gmail Shortcut
• Had fun with “Insults”

Yet to form an opinion on:

• Snarl Traffic
• Nova
• MiniPiano
• Flashlight
• TonePad
• Here I Am
• Dictionary
• WikiTap
• Dictionary! (different to above)
• RDP
• Drum Meister Lite
• MyPaint Free
• TuneWiki

“searching for enterprise 2.0 links, and fully engaging in the lecture” (Jason Watson you can now look away).

I noticed the battery status on my laptop was… questionable. It was at a 100% after a fair bit of use and having not charged it for a few days. Here is a screenshot.

How much battery do I have left combined?

So as you can see I have two batteries installed. The inbuilt battery which comes with the laptop (like all of them) and an extended travell battery which is 1.5x bigger than the inbuilt one.

So how much batter do I have left?

Battery 1 – 100%
Battery 2 – 32%

Total = 100% with 46:19 hours remaining!

I know we are making advancements with technology and increasing battery life, but I’m pretty sure something is at play here.

Anyway, just a fun post to share a different problem. I’m not to worried as battery 1 (the one the comes with the laptop) has been a bit flaky and have got a new one coming my way.

I dare say this might be the cause of the problem.

So have you had any funny errors? Strange things that have happened to your PC? We have all seen the Blue Screen Of Death and the Windows errors but perhaps you have experienced something else?

If I get the time I might try and share some problems which you can easily replicate in Lotus Notes (hopefully you have never used it as a mail client, but at work we are forced to use it).