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Official Google Australia Blog: Your new map of Australia

2010-11-12T20:46:00.001Z

Better maps for Australia - hopefully Google Navigation follows soon

Keep the map improvements coming. I do hope this is connected with Google Navigation, as user feedback would be essential.

Telstra uses misleading AdSense ads to try to cash in on iPhone hype

2008-06-09T14:01:00.007Z

Telstra has obviously paid big dollars for the keyword "iphone" on the Australian Google site, nothing wrong there, except the ads are misleading (and in breach of Google AdSense policy).

There is also nothing new about competitors buying ads for keywords covering rival or even just related products. In this case Tesltra is placing an ad for Next G Network Prepaid - they report some features of their plan and display a URL of www.telstra.com.au/Iphone. Now it is not unusual that the exact URL in an ad is not the URL that you land on, however in this case the URL is not even valid. This is a breach of AdSense policy, and it is so clearly created to deceive you, which possibly is a breach of Australian Trade Practices Act.

"In the ACCC's view everyone involved in the preparation and broadcasting or publication of misleading or deceptive advertising is in potential breach of the Trade Practice Act 1974".

Google Policy:

Display URL must be accurate.

Your display URL must accurately reflect the URL of the website you're advertising. It should match the domain of your landing page so users will know which site they'll be taken to when they click on your ad.
If your actual destination URL link is too long to use as your display URL, use a shortened version (such as your homepage) that meets the character limit for this field.

Example:
Destination URL: http://www.shoesforsale.com/ladiesshoes/highheels.html
Display URL: www.shoesforsale.com

The display URL field cannot be used as another line of ad text.
Your display URL must include the domain extension, for example: .com.au, .net.au, or .org.au

Re:Tear Down This Wall!

2007-11-01T20:51:00.000Z

I totally agree with Dave Uhlir's post that the presence industry is just waiting to really take off, once the major players realise that the fighting over many small pies is stupid and it is better to make one big pie.

Singling out Microsoft with their lack of support for XMPP is however unfair. What about Google's support for SIP/SIMPLE? Ever since the launh of Google Talk they have teased us with "SIP support coming soon", along with another pet peeve "we look forward to supporting MAC and Linux".

Joost - Streaming Video with Hype

2007-05-15T00:26:00.000Z

Joost is video streaming done well, very well. Joost is also viral marketing done well, very well. Because I can only see it to be evolutionary and not a revolutionary step towards IPTV. There are no real "new" features, no new paradigm.

Also whilst we don't need another Youtube with user created content, which Joost has clearly said it will not be, I hope we will see it open enough to allow independent creators be able to publish their stuff. As a start what would be great is a Top Video Podcast channel that had the most popular video podcasts from one of the podcast directories.

Gizmocall.com - Skype Killer 2.0

2007-02-12T08:23:00.000Z

It has now been close to two weeks since Michael Robertson announced the launch of GizmoCall.com, his latest attempt at a Skype killer. The service allows the making of a free voip call using just a browser via a Flash plugin.

My experience has been awful to the point of unusable, over several calls. This surprised me as I have been using both the Gizmoproject softphone and a SIP handset logged into GizmoProject over several months with no issues.

The danger of course is that GizmoCall will destroy any reputation that the GizmoProject has built and maybe even taint SIP as unreliable and poor quality VOIP, at least in the mind of the masses.

Maybe what we need for mass adoption is a Google buyout of SIPphone.com (the company behind GizmoProject), as Google seems incapable of launching their own SIP service.

Warning: Google Maps Australia will get you lost!

2007-02-09T10:01:00.000Z

Recently Google announced the enhancement of Google Maps Australia by enabling business search and what they describe as "driving directions".

In a move I find surprising, the map data they are using is terrible inaccurate, to the point that it is useless, as no sane person would (should) rely on it.

In a simple task of navigating a few suburbs, (North Epping to Pennant Hills in Sydney's North West) Google Maps Australia selected a route that included a large shortcut that saves kilometres of travel by suggesting that you navigate several hundred metres through bushland followed by no less than two non-through roads, all in less than 10km.

The accurate shortest route is this one

Google Maps Australia has this disclaimer:
These directions are for planning purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, or other events may cause road conditions to differ from the map results.

How about reality may differ from map results?

All this is a shame as their Google Maps for Mobile is otherwise a killer mobile app. (By the way where is Google Talk for Mobile?)

openSUSE on PS3

2007-01-17T12:33:00.000Z

Over on the openSUSE wiki there are moves to get openSUSE running on the PlayStation 3. Progress is a bit limited so far, and volunteers (ideally with hardware) are welcome to join in. If you don't know how to compile a Linux kernel, it is probably a bit early for you to join in. If you want to take part you should also join the opensuse-ppc mailing list.

Essential openSUSE Repositories for Australians

2007-01-04T22:17:00.000Z

Things have improved greatly recently as Pacific Internet now keeps an up to date mirror of not only complete openSUSE but also Packman. After installing openSUSE 10.2, I have found that 50% of the time it tends to pick an update server in Japan, so I no longer configure the update server during install. Personally I delete all repositories after install (including the CD/DVD install source), and then add the following in YAST 'by URL' using the following:

Updates:
http://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/suse/update/10.2/
Packman:
ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/packman/suse/10.2/
Install (OSS):
ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/opensuse/distribution/10.2/repo/oss/
Install (non-OSS):
ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/opensuse/distribution/10.2/repo/non-oss/

IP Phone AT-530 - Review

2006-12-29T00:36:00.000Z

Looking for a cheap SIP IP phone handset? Then you should consider the AT-530 as an option. It has many advanced features usually not found in such a cheap phone and sometimes not even in the more expensive ones.

Here are the features that I find the most useful:

Two Ethernet jacks.
Can register to two SIP services.
Simple Dial plan - ie setup different SIP providers for different number ranges, including adding and removing prefixes. No need to dial international number format for local calls when using international SIP providers. If you had several handsets you could setup a basic office without any PBX,. eg Dial 101 and using dial plan set it to to go straight to IP address of another handset.
Loud and clear handset and handsfree.

There are also some other features that are good if you need them (I don't currently use them)

IAX2 protocol support (easier protocol when connecting through firewalls to an Asterisk PBX).
Power-over-Ethernet - if your Ethernet switch supports it, relieves you of the power adapter at the phone.

So what is bad about the phone? Well it mostly comes down to aesthetics and certain minor things. It is a light handset, and I find the cord a bit short, so the base will move if you stretch it a bit too far. There is a network status light on the front of the phone, this is so not required for telephone functions, it should be on the actual network port as we are used to on laptops etc.

Installation and Configuration

Installation is easy, just plug it in to your Ethernet, and power.
DHCP on your network should give it an IP address.
Press the SYS key on the phone, and it will show you the IP address that it is using. Enter this into a web browser and connect to the phone web configuration interface. See the Quick Start Guide (pdf) for more details.
The first thing you should do, is to make sure that you are running the latest firmware. My phone had V1.0 when it arrived, and IAX2 was not actually an option until I updated the firmware.

I use this phone as an extra phone line, I use sipme.com.au for local Untimed calls in Australia for 9.9c (with no monthly plan, beat that engin), I also use gizmoproject.com to provide SIP federation (when calling to and from other SIP services).

More info can be found at:
http://voip-info.org/wiki/view/AT-530
http://www.atcom.cn (Manufacturer site for manual, firmware, support forum)

openSUSE 10.2 on Acer Aspire 1681 WMLi

2006-12-28T23:01:00.000Z

Installation is trouble free. Some things to note are:

openSUSE has Xorg V7.2. and the latest video drivers from ATI only support 7.1, if you want 3D acceleration (ie XGL), you will need to follow the instructions on this page: http://en.opensuse.org/ATI_Driver (or wait for ATI to update their driver).
This laptop has a buggy DSDT (battery indication will be broken) but can be fixed as follows:

Download the fixed and compiled DSDT file (only use this file on an Aspire 1681WMLi) from here:DSDT.aml and place in /etc/acpi/
Update /etc/sysconfig/kernel with the path to the DSDT file:
ACPI_DSDT="/etc/acpi/DSDT.aml"
Run: mkinitrd and Reboot.

If you have a similar model (but not identical) follow the instructions here, to create your own DSDT file (that's how I created it). Note that you don't need to recompile the kernel to get battery indication working, as described on that page.

Don't GTalk the talk if you can't GWalk the walk.

2006-09-29T21:13:00.000Z

Google is claiming that anyone can now talk. Come on Google! How could anybody claim such nonsense.

I expected an announcement that a Mac and Linux client had been released and special mesh network version was to be included in the One Laptop per Child project.

We can only hope that Google Talk will announce the following, so that they can make a new post with the same title that will be closer to the truth:
1. Finally release native clients for Mac and Linux. Saying that they will, is just teasing.
2. Support SIP. As I posted over a year ago in this blog (the post is not hard to find), I believe that this will be what turns Google Talk into a killer app.

Now imagine further into the future, the Google Search appliances are extended and introduce Google Office Appliance - a device that provides search (obviously), SIP PBX/Gateway, provides a local cache of the Google Spreadsheets, Writely etc, for persistence and high-performance.

So I say again. Come on Google Give us the choices that you talk about.

Or is it just talk....

Jingle and zip SIP

2005-12-20T13:05:00.000Z

Ok Google has now tried to explain what libjingle actually is over on the Google Talk blog.

They still really need to explain why you would base any solution on Jingle rather than SIP (besides the obvious fact that Google Talk doesn't support SIP yet). The only scenario I can see, would be if you were already using XMPP.

Don't get me wrong, opening up the current protocol, and thereby allowing any device on any platform access is absolutely great, but I am still actually a little dissapointed with the latest announcements, as I see SIP being what will turn Google Talk from a teen internet gadget thing into the enabler and consolidator for the next generation of voice communications on this planet.

Google Talk - My Prediction

2005-08-30T11:43:00.000Z

You may not realise it yet, but the latest service released by Google, called Google Talk will in my opinion revolutionise the telephony market, the future heading of IM and therefore presence.

Some facts:
1. Google is big - it is a company secret but it is estimated that Google has close to 100,000 machines in data centres across the world for current search, gmail, maps etc.
2. They have recently purchased fiber across the United States. ie They own their own internet backbone.
3. They have announced that they are doing another IPO and will raise US$4bn, with no announcement on what they will spend it on.

What they have announced: New Instant messaging service with voice. If you haven't seen it, the client they released is very basic and is not getting anybody excited, but that is because people are only looking at the client.

The real announcement is this:
1. Open standard IM protocol XMPP- ie anybody can build a client and connect to the Google Talk servers, ie roll your own presence and IM. There is already a number of existing IM clients that support XMPP (or Jabber protocol).
2. SIP - announced to be supported in the near future, they currently do voice using XMPP. ie in future existing softphones, physical sip handsets adapters and PBXs will just connect.
3. Federation - Google will do interconnect with other networks, "We look forward to federating with any service provider who shares our belief in enabling user choice and open communications. " With Earthlink and SIPPhone's Gizmo Project already announced.
4. They support Global IP Sound codecs (same codecs used by Skype, and considered by many the best for Internet VOIP), ie Skype will not have a quality advantage.

In summary, with the size of Google and using open standards to help consolidate the currently rather fragmented internet voice market, it won't be long before I have a physical SIP phone connected to Google (or a federated partner) and interconnected to everything (that matters), including PSTN with indial numbers, thats my prediction. If I was a telco not in the data space I would be very scared.