Author Archives: Michael Wyres

Should An Official ABC Twitter Account Be Saying This?

What exactly is an official ABC Twitter account doing tweeting something like this? Now, whether or not the opinion expressed is valid – (and I’m making no particular judgement on the opinion expressed) – whoever is operating this account on behalf of the ABC, should be expressing this opinion on a personal account, not an […]

Google Fiber Lighting The Way For Our NBN

Even though I generally truly hate the term “superfast broadband” – (the corny piece of nomenclature insisted upon by our politicians, and which ranks up there with “cyber-this” and “cyber-that”) – the pending arrival of the National Broadband Network (NBN) and its “superfast” speeds in many areas of Australia will mean many things to many […]

Shabby Inline Adverstising In Fairfax RSS Feeds

Over the last couple of weeks I came to conclusion that both my work computer and home desktop computer had somehow managed to become infected with a virus. This was something of a surprise, given the security techniques in place in both my home network, and the corporate network – but as always, I keep […]

Debunking The NBN Radiation Myth

There is often much-ado created when new communications towers – particularly for mobile internet and telephony – are proposed for erection, and the usual NIMBY-like behaviour starts. The two most common complaints are “it looks bad and ruins our views” and “the radiation will kill us”. The visual amenity of communications tower is a valid […]

Bye Honey! Off To The Salno!

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but haven’t gotten around to taking a photo of a new hairdressing salon that opened up a couple of months ago in the shopping strip around the corner from my house until now. Salno? “Just a little of the bcak, please!” This reminds me of a […]

Facebook Now Lets Anyone Message You At No Cost

Facebook has once again changed its privacy settings, allowing anyone to message you, where previously you could limit who could message you. It was a great mechanism that stopped randoms from sending you messages. I was greeted with the following “information” on my account this afternoon. For some time, Facebook has been toying with the […]

Why Is The CSIRO Analysing Millions Of Tweets?

It seems that “AC” and “DC” over at the CSIRO didn’t get together and discuss the very similar tweets they sent out today. Here’s the first: And here’s the second: How does one analysis come up with 12.5 million tweets about the bushfires in a week, yet another finds only 55,000 out of 6.6 million […]

Turnbull Must Now Accept NBN Has Not Completely Failed

Hey there Malcolm Turnbull – do you remember this interview on Sky News Australia from February 2012? You should, as it is on your own website. It makes interesting reading: “MALCOLM TURNBULL: But you know, the big challenge here — the extraordinary thing that we have seen today, is we know the NBN has passed […]

Fletcher Flubs Complaint Over 4G Auction Reserve Prices

With the impending cessation of analogue television signals in Australia, the government are preparing to auction the RF spectrum that will be freed up at that time. This spectrum is expected to predominantly be taken up for use in commercial cellular mobile networks for data and voice services. Late last year, the reserve price was […]

Who Now The What Now Vodafone?

Late last year, I reported on the status of the Vodafone network around my home and the apparent suddenness of the lack of usable 3G in the vicinity. Using data provided from the Radio Frequency National Site Archive, I have generated a map of the locations – (via GPS) – of all towers providing Vodafone […]