melting Melbourne

Williamstowns version of the White house?

Any resemblance here with the white house mmm.

Delicious and Technorati lead me astray

So, playing with Technorati as you do when its 40+ degrees outside and its cleaning day, and came across a blog @ the white house

and also a slide show of the American Presidents which kept me amused for a short time.

Humble pencil case and pen obsolete?

From The Age
Asher Moses
January 28, 2009 - 3:22PM

Sales of netbooks in Australia have exploded, with the mini low-cost computers now accounting for more than one in 10 laptop and desktop PCs sold - no mean feat considering they've been around for just over a year.

Retailers say the growth has been driven in part by cash-strapped parents seeking to equip their children with simple, low-powered computers for doing homework before the new school year, which for state schools began today.

"We sold over 4500 laptops in a week during back-to-school sales in Dick Smith stores across the country," Dick Smith spokesman Luke Schepen said.

"Netbooks appear to be driving this growth with customers looking to switch to the smaller formats which offer the basic functionality needed for students at an affordable price."

Intel, which produces the chips that power the netbooks, said sales across all brands in Australia had increased from 10 per cent of the consumer laptop market six months ago to 21 per cent today.

"The volume of netbooks sold in Australia doubled between Q3 and Q4 of 2008 and sits well above 10 per cent of total desktops and notebooks sold which, as far as Intel is concerned, moves the netbook very solidly into being a legitimate product category in its own right," Intel Australia marketing manager Kate Burleigh said.

The netbook category was pioneered in November 2007 by Asus with its Eee PC products and immediately appealed to tech-savvy users looking for a highly portable, inexpensive laptop for use as a second computer and for browsing the web while out of the house.

But parents have also been buying them for their children to take advantage of the Rudd Government's Education Tax Refund. This allows parents to claim up to $375 in education expenses for each primary school child and $750 for each secondary school child.

Netbooks typically range in price from just over $300 to $800, depending largely on the size of the screen and other extra features such as a bundled wireless broadband plan for connecting to the internet when out of the house.

They typically weigh about one kilogram and some can easily fit into a jacket pocket, making them ideal for people who want to be able to surf the web on the go and always have access to email and social networking sites.

"[Netbooks] are an extremely fast growing category in the notebook market," Evan Williams, Dell's consumer sales and marketing manager for Australia and New Zealand, said.

"A lot of people who already have a productivity notebook in the home are taking this as a second device for while they're out and about."

Analyst firm IDC has predicted global netbook sales would grow by up to 300 per cent in 2009 compared with 2008.

At the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas this month, HP, Dell, Lenovo, MSI Computer, Asus and Acer all showed off new netbook models. Asus will soon sell one with a touch screen that swivels into the tablet format.

Although netbooks are low-powered, the trend toward web-based email, office and other services (as opposed to installing software on the computer itself) means that it is not essential to have a powerful machine.

In fact, the lack of grunt might be beneficial in a school context because an inability to play games, watch DVDs or even stream YouTube videos smoothly means children have no choice but to concentrate on work.

The NSW Department of Education and Training is about to select a supplier of "learning devices" (laptops) that it plans to give to 200,000 secondary students.

The laptops must be $500, no bigger than an A4 sheet of paper, weigh less than 1.75 kilograms and be tough enough for school use (dust and moisture resistant and with no moving parts).

The price and specifications indicate the eventual design will resemble a ruggedised netbook.

R u a Wikipedia or Britannica wover

Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0

Stephen Hutcheon
January 22, 2009 - 2:37PM

In a move to take on Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica is inviting the hoi polloi to edit, enhance and contribute to its online version.

New features enabling the inclusion of this user-generated content will be rolled out on the encyclopedia's website over the next 24 hours, Britannica's president, Jorge Cauz, said in an interview today.

He also used the opportunity to take a swipe at Britannica's upstart nemesis and Google for helping to promote Wikipedia via its search rankings.

"If I were to be the CEO of Google or the founders of Google I would be very [displeased] that the best search engine in the world continues to provide as a first link, Wikipedia," he said."Is this the best they can do? Is this the best that [their] algorithm can do?"

Mr Cauz, who is visiting Australia, said the changes were the first in a series of enhancements to the britannica.com website designed to encourage more community input to the 241-year-old institution and, in doing so, to take on Wikipedia in the all important search engine rankings.

"What we are trying to do is shifting ... to a much more proactive role for the user and reader where the reader is not only going to learn from reading the article but by modifying the article and - importantly - by maybe creating his own content or her own content," he said.

Mr Cauz said that any changes or additions made to Britannica entries online would have to be vetted by one of the company's staff or freelance editors before the changes were reflected on the live site.

He said the encyclopedia had set a benchmark of a 20-minute turnaround to update the site with user-submitted edits to existing articles, which are written by the encyclopedia's paid expert contributors.

Many of those changes will eventually appear in the printed version of the encyclopedia, which is published every two years.

In addition to the community editing features, Britannica.com will enable approved users to add their own creative input which will sit beside the authorised articles.

Wikipedia, which ranks among the world's top-10 most visited websites, is maintained by volunteers from all over the world and anyone with an internet connection can create and edit articles and publish them on the site.

Would-be editors on the Britannica site will have to register using their real names and addresses before they are allowed to modify or write their own articles.

Mr Cauz characterised Wikipedia as containing "plenty of cracks on it in terms of the quality".

"It's very uneven, the facts are not always correct, the model contains a lot of pitfalls."

Damning his competitor with faint praise, he said a big problem was that many users considered Wikipedia to be "fine" or "good enough".

"What is really unfortunate is that when it comes to knowledge - which is really what makes humans evolve or not evolve into the future - we tend to be non-discriminating. And that's really the troublesome thing."

Asked if he looks at Wikipedia, he said he spent several hours a day online.

"I think it would be impossible not to look at Wikipedia when one goes to Google. It's the most symbiotic relationship happening out there," he said.

"It's very much used by many people because it covers many topics and it's the No.1 search result on Google. It's not necessarily that people go to Wikipedia."

(Google's PageRank search algorithm is designed to look for the most relevant and cited web page and often that happens to be a Wikipedia entry).

Encyclopedia Britannica was first published in 1768 - two years before Captain James Cook's discovery of Australia. Founded in 1994, the Britannica.com's database contains articles comprising more than 46 million words - not counting other forms of media content.

Founded in 2001, Wikipedia is now available in more than 250 languages and attracts about 700 million visitors annually.

The English edition alone contains nearly 2.7 million articles.

Earthrace on the bay

Did you happen to see a stranger than life boat on the water the last few days?

what is earthrace?

In June 2008, the amazing Earthrace vessel set a new world record for a powerboat to circle the globe, and she did this with 100% renewable biodiesel fuel, and a net zero carbon footprint. The voyage was over 24,000 nautical miles, and took 60 days, 23 hours and 49 minutes, smashing the old record by over two weeks.

Follow earthrace @ the website

eNewsletter is coming to Hobsons Bay Libraries

Click on the enews letter envelope @ Hobsonsbaylibraries to be on the mailing list for the 1st inaugural enewsletter and be up to date with all the news and events @ your library

Southern Star Docklands

Have you visited the Southern Star yet? other than on my blog, see right.

Well this article from the Age gives you all the answers to the questions.

Observation wheels are becoming must-haves for cities on the up and up, writes Belinda Jackson.

It's big, it's round, it's the Southern Star Observation Wheel. The what? Exactly. It's Melbourne's latest attraction, a gleaming white ferris wheel on steroids.

And it's so much like the London Eye you could be forgiven for referring to it as something much simpler like ... oh, the Melbourne Eye. Now would that be too hard?

Opened just five days before Christmas, the privately owned wheel has been six years in the making - four in the design sheds of Japan, Tasmania and Melbourne then two years from breaking ground at the site at Docklands.

If you've driven into the city from Melbourne Airport in the past year, you would have seen the frame gradually rising up from the new shopping, hotel and residential complex of Waterfront City.

Brisbane, prepare for wheel envy. Melbourne's Southern Star is waaay bigger than your Southbank circle. In fact, it's double the size at 120 metres high, and waaaay above Sydney's Luna Park dwarf, at a puny, unEmerald-City-like 40 metres. And yes, we all know that size matters.

On the international front, the Southern Star is the world's third observation wheel but, continuing the mine's-bigger-than-yours theme, it's 15 metres shorter than the London Eye and positively dwarfed by the Singapore Flyer, at 165 metres.

Each of the 21 enclosed cabins fits a maximum of 20 folk and people, it's not a ride, it's a flight, or so say our fluoro-clad flight attendants as we step into the air-conditioned cabins for its inaugural spin.

The wheel never truly stops turning but creeps gradually around the rotation, with passengers stepping on and off as it drifts slowly past the landing platform.

Here are some more stats: its height is equivalent to a 40-storey building, it comprises 10 kilometres of steel piping, used 1650 tonnes of steel and is held together with 38,000 bolts. The star design mimics the seven-pointed Federation Star, to add a pinch of patriotism.

On opening day, the first public passenger, winner of a local radio competition, was booked in to propose to his girlfriend (rumour has it she was sick) and a great-grandmother reserved a cabin to get married as she and her beau took a turn on the wheel.

The trip is a single rotation, which takes 30 minutes, moving at a snail-like 11 metres a minute as the panorama of Melbourne spreads out below. A flyover here, a railway station there, the Channel Nine chopper in between.

But let's not be churlish: the highlights were looking out over the city skyline and to the Yarra River, which was behaving beautifully on the day, with the sun playing on the water and little yachts chasing each other around Port Phillip Bay. We could see the Dandenong Ranges to the east and the You Yangs to the west.

A possible alternative highlight could be if the people who have bought apartments in the Waterfront City complex decided to do some topless sunbathing, because we could see right into their little designer courtyards.

But sadly, not today. The lowlight was V/Line's West Tower railway yards and the empty construction sites where numerous hotels and two Olympic ice-skating rinks are pegged to be built as part of Australia's Olympic Winter Institute.

And now for the big question: how much does it cost? Such a big question requires a big answer. If the perfect nuclear family went up, they'd be paying $92 for half an hour's entertainment and then forking out an additional $15 for the photo taken at the top of the wheel . That's after they ran the gamut of factory outlets, food courts and face-painting stalls on the walk to the ticket box.

While it's cheaper than its London and Singapore peers, the Southern Star is almost double the cost of its rival for Melbourne views, Eureka Tower, if said nuclear family chose not to go out on the tower's glass-bottomed overhang, the Edge.

Get in the game Summer Read!

Have you been busy reading this summer holiday?

If youvre completed the Summer Reading Challenge you are invited to celebrate. Join in some entertaining activities, including a performance from the drama workshops and afternoon tea , receive certificates and meet fellow readers

Thursday 22nd January, 2 - 3 @ Altona Meadows

Poetry Workshop @ Willy

Poetry is a great way to get your thoughts on paper.Award winning local author Sherryl Clark is an expert in the craft and she will show you how to create poems as word pictures through fun and interactive writing activities
Grade prep - 6 Today 10 to 11

Grade 7 - 12 11.30 to 12.30

B there Willy library today

Library Idol

Dont be idol today, get down to Altona Meadows Library for the Singstar Karaoke competition and win great prizes

Thursday 15th January 2 to 3 pm

Polaroid makes a come back

Web Willy got an original polaroid for Xmas (as a collector of all things old) and now finds they are making a comeback. Pity you cant get the original film anymore, it appeared a real goer Watch out in 2009 for a display of old cameras coming to a HBCC Library

January 9, 2009 - 7:01AM The Age

A strange little ritual used to go along with Polaroid cameras. The shooter would grab the print as it came out of the camera and wave it in the air, as if that would stimulate the chemicals and make the picture appear faster. It didn't. Yet it felt dumb to just stand there, waiting for the picture to develop.

Polaroid stopped making film packs last year, so this little piece of tech culture will soon be just a memory. But just as the film-based Polaroid camera is fading away, along comes its digital replacement.

That's right: Polaroid was set to announce Thursday at the International Consumer Electronics Show that it is introducing a digital camera that produces prints right on the spot. You can even call them "instant" prints, but they take nearly a minute to appear, so they're only as "instant" as the old film prints.

Essentially, the $US200 PoGo is a camera that contains a built-in color printer. It produces 2-by-3 inch photos by selectively heating spots on specially treated paper. It has nothing to do with the old chemical Polaroid process, but the prints convey some of the same Pop Art charm: They're grainy and the colours are slightly off, with faces tending toward a deathly blue-green.

The camera is a successor to a standalone printer Polaroid put out last summer, designed to connect to camera phones and digital cameras. When I reviewed it, I noted that if Polaroid combined the printer with an image sensor and an LCD screen, it would be a resurrection of the instant camera. It turns out that's exactly what Polaroid was working on.

Unfortunately, you'll have to wait to get your hands on the camera: Polaroid says it will go on sale in late March or early April in the US.

The camera is a fun product, and people who have been lamenting the death of the Polaroid will find solace in it. Its prints can be peeled apart to reveal a sticky back, which makes them easy to paste on fridges, doors, books, computers, cell phones and other surfaces you want to personalise. For a colleague's going-away party, I took a photo of him, printed out a couple of copies and pasted them on soda cans for an instant "commemorative edition."

The PoGo also has crucial advantages over the old film cameras. You can look at what you shot on the LCD screen, then choose whether you want to print it. You can produce multiple prints of an image, or print something you shot some time ago.

The standalone printer and the new camera use the same paper, which costs $As for a 10-pack, or $As for a 30-pack. It's expensive compared to anklet paper, but about a third of the price of Polaroid film (there are still stocks in stores). No ink or toner is needed.

Despite its high points, The PoGo has the feel of a first-generation product, with noteworthy shortcomings.

As a camera, it's primitive. It doesn't have auto-focus, just a switch for infinity or close-up shots. The resolution is five megabytes, far below that of cheaper compact cameras. Neither of these things matter much for the quality of the prints, which are small and of low resolution anyway, but they do matter if you want to use the digital captures for other purposes.

Like some other cheap digital cameras, there's a substantial lag from the time you press the shutter to when the picture actually is taken, making it nearly impossible to capture action or fleeting expressions.

The prints are narrower than the image captured by the sensor, so you can't print the exact image you see on the screen. Substantial slices are trimmed from the top and bottom of the image to produce the print. In the default shooting mode, the camera doesn't warn you about this effect. You can crop images you've shot, zooming in on parts of them, but there is no way to reduce the size of the image to fit it all on the print.

The life of the rechargeable battery is limited, because of the energy needed to heat up the prints. You can get a bit more than 20 prints on one charge if you do them in one sitting. If you make a print only now and then, you'll get fewer on a charge, because the camera will need to heat up the print head every time. (The old Polaroid cameras didn't have battery problems, because most of them had batteries built into the film packs - a brilliant design. But enough nostalgia.)

None of these flaws are fatal. If you don't like the way the PoGo works as a camera, you can shoot pictures with another camera that uses an SD memory card, then move the card over to the PoGo and print the pictures. But if that's what you plan to use the camera for, you might as well buy the $Asci PoGo Instant Mobile Printer, which is slightly smaller. It doesn't take memory cards, but will connect to other cameras with a ASP cable.

The camera is much simpler to use than the printer, and it fits the bill for those who want to recapture the simple, spontaneous spirit of Polaroid shooting. Sadly, Polaroid declared bankruptcy in December because of troubles at its parent company. That puts the future supply of PoGo printer paper in question, but Polaroid is still operating, and it appears it will continue for the foreseeable future. In any case, it's likely the portable printing technology will live on, because what it does is unique.

AP

Thats Melbourne on the move

Check out the update of you tube with the Southern Star observation wheel click on the 3rd movie for the time lapse of the construction.
Wow that is Melbourne on the move.

Get up close with snakes, frogs, lizards, today @ Altona Library

Andrew Wegener from Australian Wildlife Lectures presents an amazing display of live and preserved wildlife. Get up close and enjoy observing snakes, frogs, lizards, stick insects and other interesting creatures.

Come anytime between anytime between 10.00am and 3.00pm.

Bookings are not required.

LOCATION: Altona Library, 123 Queen St
CONTACT NAME: Children's and Youth Team PHONE: 9932 1330

Tune in to the world on your car radio

Asher Moses from The Age, January 7, 2009 - 4:25PM
Australian technology is powering the world's first internet car radio, which will soon provide drivers worldwide with access to 30,000 stations including online broadcasts and AM and FM stations from around the globe.The technology was developed by Melbourne-based online radio aggregator miRoamer, which has inked a deal with one of the largest producers of car radios in the world, German-based Blaupunkt.The technology, unveiled in prototype form at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, poses a significant threat to traditional terrestrial broadcasters such as Austereo because it opens them up to competition from tens of thousands more radio stations from around the world.Today, it is difficult to access live internet radio broadcasts without sitting in front of a computer.Blaupunkt will produce the radios, which should soon be integrated into the latest models by car manufacturers such as Ford, Holden, Mercedes, BMW and Audi. The product will also be sold separately for those who want to install it in their cars.George Parthimos, CEO of Doncaster-based miRoamer, said in an interview his company had signed agreements with internet radio stations from all over the world and brought them together so they could be accessed through miRoamer.com and on devices including car radios and mobile phones."Some of them are small garage type stations that might only have five or 10 listeners all the way up to broadcasters which have an audience of up to 5 or 6 million people monthly," he said.All up, 30,000 stations are offered, which includes established AM and FM radio broadcasts from all over the world."You can listen to anything from traditional terrestrial stations, to internet-only stations, to genre-based stations - jazz, rock, pop, '80s, '70s, comedy, talk, finance," Parthimos, 37, said."You're not tied down to the limitations of terrestrial radio. We see this as an evolution of radio."The Blaupunkt radio accesses the internet by connecting via Bluetooth to the driver's mobile phone, which must be hooked up to a telco's 3G mobile broadband plan.Parthimos said a 2GB monthly data plan would be required to power the internet radio for a month on the average drive to and from work.He admitted that amount "sounds exorbitant in Australia", where mobile broadband data allowances are low and users are slugged with high fees for exceeding their limits.Competition between telcos has brought prices down and increased data allowances to 10GB on the high-end plans, but this pales in comparison with the US where mobile broadband plans come with unlimited data.As well as the cost of the mobile broadband plan, internet car radio users will need to pay a fee for the radio itself - Parthimos says it will retail for about $US399 ($560) - and a monthly subscription fee of about $15 to access the stations.The product is expected to be launched in the US and Europe in the second half of this year, before coming to Australia next year as a stand-alone product and built into new cars from the factory.

Wednesday Arvo @ the Flicks Free popcorn & drink

hmmm not so clear
just click on the image for details..

R computers out and Ipods in?

Homework is fun on an iPod touch, Miki Perkins, The Age
January 3, 2009

A PILOT program in which teenagers used iPods for school work has increased attendance and increased enthusiasm for homework.A class of year 8 students at Shepparton High School in central Victoria are the first in Australia and among the first in the world to use iPod touches in the classroom for a global "mobile learning" project.The students use the hand-held media players to search the internet, download music, do quizzes, research and submit assignments and collaborate with a school in Singapore.Preliminary research on the program found students were more willing to come to school, did more homework and used their iPods more than laptops or desktop computers.Using an online learning program called Studywiz, students and teachers accessed school-wide emails and saved their homework to an "elocker".Pupils also used the iPods, which were lent by Apple, for science experiments - to see how many decibels they produce - and in history classes.Louise Duncan, the teacher who set up the project, said the devices were cheaper than laptops and allowed students to tailor information and stay focused in class.The project had also shown not all teenagers were comfortable in a digital environment. "We assume that 14-year-olds are really technologically savvy, but they're often not," she said.

Happy New Year 2009

Looking forward to a year of bright ideas, innovation and positive thoughts.