For the April 2013 Nighlife spot Tony Delroy and I looked at the mobile phone turning 40, Windows 8 coming to an end, Blackberry’s chances of succeeding and what happens when the internet goes dark.
Danny Hillis gives a great discussion of what could happen if the internet was turned off along with the history of the net in this TED talk.
If you missed the show, you can download it from the Nightlife website.The next show will be on May 16 and we hope you can join us then.
Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightife across Australia to discuss how technology affects your business and life. For February 2013 we’ll be looking at the software rip-off, smartphones for seniors and Telstra’s roadmap for the mobile economy.
The show will be available on all ABC Local stations and streamed online through the Nightlife website.
Some of the topics we’ll discuss include the following;
We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.
Tune in on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.
You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.
I used to be a cranky radio listener.
One morning in early 1998 I was listening to my local ABC station, then 2BL, when stand in breakfast host Bob Hughes was interviewing a “Y2K expert” who had the standard spiel designed to scare people into buying expensive consulting services.
Irritated by the expert’s shoddy advice, I dashed off a quick “with respect” fax to the radio station – the ABC didn’t have publicly facing email addresses at that time – and expected it would be ignored.
A few weeks later Bob Hughes invited me on his regular Sunday spot to talk about Y2K and computers in general. He didn’t mention we’d spend most of the time taking listeners’ calls.
After a few minutes of ‘umming’ and ‘aaahing’ with lots of bluffing, Bob finished with “we’ll see you next month Paul.”
So it began.
Over time the segments moved from 702 Weekend on Sunday mornings to regional spots and the national Tony Delroy nightlife segment
Looking at the sadly neglected PC Rescue website, the programs have ranged from the mundane to the mad, bad and ugly.
At the ugly side, the Windows virus epidemic of the early 2000s looms large. At one stage almost every caller had a virus problem, the only ones that were didn’t were Mac users calling in to crow about their not having this problem.
We enjoyed the various platform wars as Microsoft consolidated its strength and then saw it ebb away as first Firefox started chipping away at its browser dominance, Google at its Internet strategy and then Apple came roaring back into relevance.
The radio shows track the rise of the web as we started talking about the various online services that were changing computing.
One of the critical things, which still hasn’t changed, was billing problems.
Through the early 2000s Australian telcos had shocking charges for data and mobile services. Calls from listeners distressed at big bills was common and the TIOs contact details would be among our most frequent answer.
It was Telstra’s decision to stop stunting Australian internet growth and offer reasonably priced plans, albeit with criminally tiny data allowances, that kick started consumer adoption of broadband plans.
Today the questions revolve around social media, online security and the merits of Android versus Apple smartphones and tablets, it’s quite notable at how Microsoft has moved from dominating the program to being almost irrelevant.
How the next 15 years will pan out are anyone’s  guess, although one suspects pervasive computing, the cloud and the internet of machines will be among the trends we’ll see.
Last week Tim Berners-Lee said that innovation is only just beginning, it’s going to be an interesting, wild ride.
I’m still a cranky radio listener, but these days I have a lot more sympathy for producers and announcers.
I’ve covered what the NBN is previously on the ABC for Tony Delroy’s Nightlife and on Technology Spectator last year looked at the challenges ahead for the project in 2013.
The National Broadband Network was always going to be one of the key issues in the 2013 Federal election, The Liberal Party’s policy launch on Sunday and Malcolm Turnbull’s comments on ABC Radio station 702 Sydney on Friday illustrated how critical it will be.
His assertion that wireless should be affordable is laudable, but the indications are that it is increasingly going to become less affordable.
It also puts the coalition in a bad position, losing the three to four billion dollars expected from the spectrum auction wouldn’t help their budget position.
One comment from Malcolm that particularly sticks out is on subsidies;
If I could just make one other point Linda, possibly the most important. The government as we know is spending a stupendous amount of money on building a national fibre to the premises broadband network. And the subsidies there run into the tens of billions of dollars –
The member for Wentworth is facturally wrong; there are no subsidies for the NBN, the government is providing the capital for the project which they hope will be paid back by 2018.
the value of the network once completed will be a fraction of what the government is spending on it.
On what basis? Certainly fibre has a 25 to 40 year expected life cycle, but that’s true of a roadway or an office building; does Malcolm suggest we don’t spend on that as well.
you could make a very powerful argument that the form, the channel of broadband communication which adds the most to productivity is in fact wireless broadband.
Possibly, but let’s see that argument. Currently data downloads to fixed lines still dwarfs mobile, both are growing exponentially.
Malcolm actually touches on the problem we’re facing with wireless — the shortage of bandwidth.
The government has been very slow at getting it out. As of the last report there was only about eight and a half thousand premises connected to the fibre optic network that they’re building throughout all of Australia
This is true, the rollout so far of the NBN has been disappointing. This is what observers are watching closely on this.
The Fibre to the Node setup also creates another problem – that of ownership. If Telstra retain ownership of the copper cable from the node to the premises, it means providers have to deal with two wholesalers one of whom is their competitor.
In fact it creates a whole rabbit’s nest of problems for retailers and could very quickly find us in a situation where telco access requires dealing with two monopolies — Telstra and NBNCo.
One the disappointing things about the National Broadband Network has been the poor debate around the topic, indeed the whole debate at times has been wrong headed. Any hope it’s going to improve during the election campaign isn’t likely
This Saturday from 3.10 pm I’ll be discussing tech with John Cadogan on Radio 2UE as the stand in for regular guest Trevor Long who’s in the US for the Consumer Electronics Show.
We’ll be taking calls on the Open Line, 13 13 32 or tweet to @paulwallbank while we’re on air. 2UE can be heard online or on 954 AM in the Sydney region.
Some of the things we’ll be covering include the following which we’ll be covering after John speaks to Trevor Long in Las Vegas.
An adult’s only rating category for computer games has come into effect across Australia. The new R18+ will make it illegal for people under 18 to hire, buy or view any games given the rating, while it will be illegal for retailers to sell R18+ games without the new markings.
The new laws bring computer games into line with the classification system for films and other material and make Australia more consistent with international standards.
Google is working with Motorola on a handset code-named ‘X Phone’ that’s aimed at grabbing market share from Apple and Samsung.
Google acquired Motorola in May 2012 for $US 12.5 billion to bolster its portfolio as its Android operating system competes with Apple and Samsung.
It’s believed that the handset will feature an imaging and gesture-recognition software developer. The new handset is due out next year.
A Californian Instagram user has levelled breach of contract and other claims against the company.
The lawsuit, filed by Finkelstein and Krinsk, says that customers who do not agree with Instagrams terms can cancel their profile, but they then forfeit their rights to photos they had previously shared on the service.
Instagram, which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them easily on the Internet, was acquired by Facebook earlier this year for $US 715 million.
It announced its revised terms of service last week and also announced its mandatory arbitration clause that forces users to waive their rights to participate in a class action lawsuit except under very limited circumstances.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved an application process for airlines to obtain broadband Internet licenses aboard their planes. Previously airlines have been granted permission on an ad-hoc basis.
Airlines need the FCC’s permission to tap into satellite airwaves while in flight so that passengers can connect to the Internet.
They also need permission from the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees the safety of inflight Internet systems.
Netbooks have been overtaken by tablet computers and vendors are seeking to push more expensive items to their customers.
Known as ‘flag day’ January 1, 1983 was the first time that the Us Department of Defence-commissioned ‘Arpanet network’ fully switched to use the Internet protocol suite communications system.
It began as a military project in the U.S in the late 1960’s and it paved the way for the arrival of the World Wide Web.
Over a third of Australians have bought or will consider buying a new mobile phone over Christmas and the summer sales.
This is contributing to the 22 million old mobile phones in Australia.
If these 22 million phones were recycled, they would divert nearly 120 tonnes of plastic from landfill.
Four out of 10 Australians have two or more old mobile phones lying around the home father dust.
Mobile Muster is the official recycling scheme of mobile phones.
You can drop your mobile phone off at a Mobile Muster Collection Point or pick up a reply-paid environment at any Australia Post store and post it in.
Your views, comments or questions are welcome so don’t be shy about calling in on 13 13 32 and Trevor Long will be back next week.