There is hope for UFB

Looks like UFB will have hope afterall.


http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/callplus-offers-unlimited-ufb-plans-business-schools-ck-124407

Prices are becoming reasonable. Now we just have to wait for fibre to make it out here. Roll on good prices and 2014-2015 (which is when fibre is supposed to be turning up).

Google Streetview goes offroad

In one of those thats cool moments google has taken streetview off the beaten track.... Way off. check out this link http://googleblog.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/become-antarctic-explorer-with.html and you can see some pics of a few huts in antartica. Real neat. Ad if you have some anaglyph glasses (the old 2 coloured 3d movie glasses) you can right click and turn on 3d too.

Investing in Technology

2 seperate headlines from the NZ Herald yesterday

 

Microsoft reports first loss as public company

Online ads help Google post $3.4b profit

When looking at investing in technology for the future I think this is quite a sign as to whos platform is becomming most popular.

Dashboard

The most used function in the google dashboard is......... Drumroll.................. Changing the password because the user has forgotten it. I'm sure it will sort itself out when people use the system more and more. At least thats what I keep telling myself.

Smart phones

I know, I know theres already software out there that does the job but none of it does it all in one spot. Hmmmm, backtrack here. Did you know that google apps can register your cellphones in the dashboard (thats the nifty admin interface that ties everything together) and you can do lots of little things to keep them safe (or disabled) if they are lost or stolen? Cool stuff.

UFB in New Zealand.

Ultrafast Broadband In New Zealand. Why we need it and why its going to fail (at first).

I tried to show a class of 25 students how to use google maps recently. The exercise was to find their home and then show a picture of it using streetview. It worked for the quickest 4 and then the internet in the school crashed. Well, it didnt really crash it just got so overloaded that it wasnt able to process data until everyone closed out.
As we move towards cloud based computing the demands on the internet are going to become huge and the old copper system just can't manage it. After the Christchurch earthquakes we also saw what happens when servers and data gets trapped inside a danger zone. Imagine being able to send a backup of the company server to off site storage automatically every night.
Phone systems will be making their calls over the internet (some even do it now). Infact one of the schools I manage has a phone system that when someone leaves voicemail it turns it into an mp3 file and emails it to the recipient. Very handy as they can receive voice messages no matter where they are.
 Some of the schools want to put in long range wirleless systems so students can take their chromebooks home and still access the internet and their cloud based files (an estimated 50 - 60% of parents in low socio economic areas have no phone line or internet, choosing to use mobile phones instead).
But heres the problem. All these things require not only speed but they use a lot of data. And New Zealand telecommunications suppliers can't seem to get the data cap idea out of their head. Once again we will be restriceted to paying huge prices for any reasonable amount of data.
A business using 100gb of data per month will be faced with $189+GST per month at full speed.
If that business or school is considered rural there will be another $200+GST per month on top of the other price as chorus has decided to charge a rural premium for services (good one NZ government for letting that one through).

All we can do is hope our internet providers realise that what we really need is data at reasonable prices. Sadly this has rarely been the case so far. I don't see them changing their minds in a hurry yet. This is one time I hope to be proven wrong.

Yesterday I placed the big order. Tawhero school is soon to be the owner of 46 brand spanking new chromebooks. Now I have to wait for them to arrive. I hate waiting for new toys.