Author Archives: Michael Wyres

Internet Explorer Slipping?

I am an avid watcher of the statistics of visits to my websites, because a wide range of interesting trends may be visible before they are widely recognised, particularly in terms of browser use. In recent months, I’ve been looking closely at the percentage of visits to my sites from various web browsers, and I […]

WTF Moment from The Australian

Flicking around the online news media over a cup of Earl Grey this afternoon, I came across this rather peculiar article at The Australian website. “COMMUNICATIONS Minister Stephen Conroy seems destined to make his own job harder than needed, with breathtaking gaps in his consultative process and an extraordinary belief that everyone should simply take […]

V/Line: Treating Customers Like Idiots – Still

This afternoon I got the following tweet from V/Line’s curiously named “@vlineinform” account, once again showing how the truth should never get in the way of, well, treating their customers like idiots. Now – notice that the current time is “16:37”, and that the tweet(s) were received “3 mins ago” – meaning they were posted […]

Fun and Failure at the Herald-Sun

Got this great screen capture from the Herald-Sun newspaper website this morning. First it was the failure – the nicely put “ceasfire” in Libya. Surely a spellchecker fail on “ceasefire”? Nice one guys. Then some cheeky humour with “Police to Test Ricky Nixon’s Undies” – referring to disgraced AFL player agent Ricky Nixon, and his […]

Online Piracy Not The Problem

There has been a lot of discussion in recent weeks, following the apparent culmination of the so-called iiTrial – in which national Australian ISP iiNet successfully defended itself against an accusation by AFACT of facilitating and doing nothing to prevent the theft of copyrighted material by its customers. AFACT themselves recently released a report claiming […]

Important Twitter Security Enhancement

Twitter today announced a new security feature enabling HTTPS for all web connections to the service. HTTPS is a secure/encrypted version of the standard web protocol, HTTP. This follows similar recent changes by Facebook. Using HTTPS where possible/available is important – it means that all your communications with the Twitter site are encrypted end-to-end from […]

Shiny Happy Coca-Cola

Got a giggle out of this piece of marketing fluff on the side of a bottle of Diet Coke this morning. “Listen closely and hear the happiness being unleashed when you open this bottle.” Sounds like a piece of the bad marketing english you’d find over at Engrish.com or on a Hello Kitty product. Funny.

On A Personal Note: NBN Concerns

It has come to my attention that my name appears in the blogroll of the site “NBN Concerns”. While it is somewhat flattering that people find my thoughts and discussions in regards to the National Broadband Network (NBN) valuable and/or interesting, I wish to clearly state for the record that I am in no way […]

The Sheep Is Dead – Long Live the Sheep

It is a common expression in this country that the foundation of our economy “rides on the back of the sheep”, referring to our long and proud agricultural history, with the “sheep’s back” statement particularly related to our wool industry. The National Broadband Network (NBN) has undoubtedly become one of the hottest politicial stories of […]

Who Gives the Coalition NBN Information?

On my way home from the office yesterday, I caught an extraordinary speech from the House of Representatives from Member for Macquarie, Louise Markus, in regards to a motion to have National Broadband Network (NBN) enabling legislation read in the house for a second time. Listening to her speech, I was repeatedly flabbergasted out just […]