Stormy Thursday

Storm damage Wellington 21/06/2013

It's been a wild, stormy night here in Wellington, cutting power to homes, ripping ferries from their moorings, closing down the airport, tearing roofs from buildings.

I know all of this, primarily because Wellington's storm dominated the news hour on Radio NZ National this morning.  Just about all of the useful information I got about road closures, transport cancellations came from the radio rather than the internet.  I trawled the websites of the schools to try to work out if the kids were staying home (they are) but no information there.  I got a piecemeal report of closures from the newstalkzb.co.nz site but not all closures were posted there either.

In this day and age I would expect that every town, city, country should have a single central information hub that aggregates updates from all over the region and presents them in a coherent form.  I haven't yet found such a resource in New Zealand.

It's the same with road traffic problems.  How can I easily find out that SH1 is blocked due to an accident on the Kapiti coast or roadworks on Centennial Highway are causing long tailbacks?  It should be easy enough, shouldn't it.  I'm not suggesting the piecemeal approach of say of visiting the AA or Transit NZ because I'm enquiring about roads.  I want a central hub with roads as one of the many options.

Such a resource would be great as a focus for people to visit but it needs to be up-to-date and reliable.  It needs to have feeds from emergency services, from local councils, from government departments, from schools and colleges, from anyone who has a message of interest to share.

I see no reason why something like this couldn't be made viable through the support of commercial sponsors - if it's as effective as I think it could be the sponsors would be queuing up to be associated with such a project.

Is this the real life

Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen

I remember when our family got our first colour TV.  It was 1975 and Bohemian Rhapsody was number 1.  The set was hired from Radio Rentals in Salisbury and delivered to our home just 2 miles from Stonehenge.

It was pre-tuned to pick up all the available broadcast channels. That was a grand total of three - BBC1, BBC2 and ITV (a second ITV channel, Channel 4, was still 7 years away).  The TV stations all closed down every evening with a stirring rendition of "God Save The Queen", to be followed by white noise and an incessant whine.  Next day when the TV started up again we sometimes had many hours of the 'test card', used by TV engineers to tune the set in when there was no actual programme broadcasting on the frequency.  On BBC2, that may well have been after lunch.

 A 22 inch TV circa 1975, complete with test card transmission  

How things have changed.  My kids are now much the same age as I was then but their multimedia experience is from a different time and space.  They see the 1975 TV scene as pretty lame.  Jump forward to 2013 and their family TV is a full high definition LCD, connected directly to the internet via a computer router, replete with digital video recorder, surround sound, Blu-ray and various games consoles.  It has quite a few more channels, many beamed in from distant parts of the world.  There are more remote controls on the coffee table than my wife can cope with (although funnily enough the kids never seem to have any trouble working out what each one does).

I don't know what the standard size TV is that people buy now but I guess a 39 -42 inch would probably be de rigueur. I could have splashed out on a 55" model but I thought I might have been pushing my luck to smuggle that one into the lounge so I got a middle of the range 42". So, I've ended up with a TV twice as big as the one I grew up watching.  I'd have thought that was reward enough.  Not so.

Sharp has recently released an LED television aimed at the consumer market that has a 90 inch display.  It's certainly not the biggest TV out there but as a consumer device for you to put in your front room that is a serious amount of display real estate.  I'll be checking it out in store next time I'm out and about.  This is something I just have to see.

What can I say?

Sharp unveils 90" Aquos LED TV (Engadget)

When a girl and a clown ruled the airwaves (Guardian UK)

South West England Vintage Television Museum

Recycling nightmares

A lack of consultation with recyclers
makes this new bottle an
environmental problem

There's been a lot of media hype generated by Fonterra for their new milk bottle packaging.  From their advertising it seems that all milk other than the Anchor brand is now spoiled because it's been exposed to light.

A cartel like Fonterra clearly has a lot of clout and they've executed a convincing media blitz to make sure that we know how green they are.  Trouble is this new packaging is turning out to be an environmental disaster.

Just like Novapay they've gone live without bothering to do the user acceptance testing.  Unlike the poor teachers who ended up with no money in the bank, the Anchor debacle isn't bankrupting individuals but it is causing some real headaches for recyclers and it's resulting in some lost revenue.

Recycling equipment grades plastic by shining a light on the incoming waste.  Apparently it's very accurate at identifying all the different sorts of plastic but the new Anchor milk bottles are being mistaken for low grade plastics and are being mis-sorted into the mixed grade pile.  The machines simply aren't callibrated to recognise this new material because no-one told them that this was coming. There's no real demand for mixed plastics and they command a very low resale price.  Some recyclers aren't even bothering to try on-selling this mixed grade stuff and are sending it straight to the landfill.

So for all of Fonterra's claims that the packaging is environmentally friendly it's proving to be anything but.  Fair's fair, Fonterra aren't the only manufacturer that has launched high-tech but poorly tested packaging into the marketplace but they are the most high profile.

It's not a criticism of the packaging itself - no-one disputes that it is high grade plastic that should be recyclable.

However, when you skip the crucial acceptance testing that ensures all parts of the supply chain are engaged and ready for your product, this is the mess that happens.

When the culprit is one of the biggest milk brands in the country that adds up to a very big pile of rubbish heading unnecessarily to the landfill.

Recyclers see red over 'green' bottles (Stuff)

Stratospheric internet

The assembled balloon in Christchurch, New Zealand

Google has balloon crazy.

Hot on the heels of the blimp trials in sub-Saharan Africa, Google has this weekend arrived at New Zealand's Lake Tekapo to launch a helium filled balloon that has climbed 20 km up into the stratosphere.

Project Loon is all pretty hush-hush but Google has released some details of the mission. The Tekapo trial is the first of the proof of concept field tests - within minutes of launching the balloon it was in position and beaming internet to the ground crew, quaintly closeted in the living room of local resident.

Local resident helps with the test

The balloons are cheap to manufacture and potentially could stay airborne for hundreds of days at a time. They're solar powered so they don't need refuelling.  With a big enough swarm of these things they could provide internet from the skies to whole countries, continents or even the entire globe.

Beaming internet from the heavens removes a huge pile of the normal logistical obstacles - no topology to get in the way, no resource consents or infrastructure headaches. In times of disasters, like earthquakes and floods, a balloon service could quickly be deployed to fill the void left by terrestrial services knocked out by the catastrophe.

It's early days but this first trial is already being hailed as a success. It's been the talk of the weekend here in New Zealand with provincial residents, disgruntled at their lousy internet connectivity, getting very excited at the Loon tests.

Up, up and away for sky high wi-fi (Stuff)

Loon project brings the web to billions (NZ Herald)

Balloon powered internet (TechRadar)

Project Loon launches from the Canterbury Plains

Focus on the road

Killer in waiting - the menace of distracted drivers

The American Automobile Association (AAA) is raising concerns about the spread of more sophisticated technology in cars that provides voice driven control of infotainment systems.

I think they have a point.  More vehicles are being equipped with this gear and in the US that volume is likely to jump from the current 9 million units to 62 million within 5 years.

Normally I'm all for technology and I love the idea of intuitive interfaces that mean the operator doesn't need to use keypads or other cryptic input methods.

However, when it comes to driving I'm of the firm belief that the car's pilot should be doing one thing only and that is focusing on driving.

If they are changing CDs, adjusting climate control, talking on a (hopefullly hands-free) phone or any other distracting activity, they are endangering the lives of themselves, their passengers and all other road users in their vicinity.

A simple suggestion - take someone with you as a passenger to make all these terribly important adjustments whilst on the move.   If you can't do that, then get everything arranged before you take the handbrake off, keep your eyes on the road ahead and on your mirrors and nothing else.  End of story.

Risky voice operated gadgets in vehicles (Stuff)

Angry Scrabblers

Scrabble players take their pursuit very seriously.  After all, it's a game played by people who pride
themselves on their vocabulary and command of language.

Scrabble players are upset about changes to the app

Mess around with the game at your peril.

Unfortunately that's exactly what has happened with the hugely popular Scrabble app.   It appears that control of the app recently moved from the Scrabble license holder, Mattel, to games specialist, Electronic Arts (EA).

However, the transition has produced a very poor customer experience and Scrabblers around the globe are up in arms.

The single biggest gripe is the loss of game history.  Serious players have notched up thousands of games and  commanded high positions on global leagues.  But that history was wiped when the transition occurred and red-faced Mattel have fessed up to admit they can't get it back.

They've also changed the game play so that it doesn't automatically refresh the board after each move, meaning the player must manually execute the refresh - very annoying.

The producers have tried to claim that they've improved the game by adding the ability to play the game in six different languages - the gamer response to that seems to be, why would I want to do that?

Another cardinal sin has been committed.  Scrabble has always used the Chambers dictionary, a reference book that players are intimately acquainted with.  The game now uses the Collins dictionary, another excellent work but still different to what has always been associated with the game.

This appears to be customer relations disaster for Mattel.  They have clearly taken their eye off the ball and have upset a loyal and passionate customer base.  In the age of technology and social media a faux pas like this spreads around the world in the time that it takes to refresh an app.   Some better user involvement before the transition could have averted this mess.

Disgruntled Scrabble players vent their frustration (BBC)

Email spring clean

Yahoo plans to reallocate inactive email addresses

It's good to see that Yahoo are going to re-release a whole bunch of inactive email addresses very soon.


This has long been a bone of contention.  It's so hard to get the email handle you want because all of the good ones were snapped up long ago.

The trouble is that even when they fall into disuse they are never released to be re-registered.  Some of the best ones have been out of circulation for over a decade.

I hope that other leading providers will follow Yahoo's lead and clean up their email bases so that we can all have a shot at picking up a flash address.

Yahoo inactive email addresses (Stuff)