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The past two weeks have seen my blogs attached to proper domain names, but after a fortnight of near-daily posts, I decided to take a small break (two days) and see how I'd done.

Last night I added a new domain, but decided to attach it to a service where I can add a small amount of monetization and even have some sharing capability.  As a result, www.geehall1.org came into being.

I did try to use that service to have the name of this blog, but half an hour of experimenting showed it wasn't going to be exactly the way I wanted.  Hence, off to purchase the .org name and then tie the service I wanted to it.

I like the idea that the .org site allows me to provide my readers with sharing links, adding a few more options than just the cross-posting that's automatic here.

For the moment, however, it's a good idea to rearrange some post scheduling so I can still adequately do two lots of near-daily posts.  So www.geehall1.org has been promoted to a daily.  Of course, that made this particular blog you're reading a bit less frequent.  This blog will now switch to twice-weekly.

That's not so bad an idea, because later in the year I want to convert this one to a fully-hosted site.  My target is to have one fully-hosted site/domain by the end of the year or earlier.  In the meantime, if it's going to be called www.geehall1.com, I'll need have have this particular page eventually redirecting to it.  So a minimal number of posts that are easy to export to the new site is a good idea.

It's also about refreshing, original content.  It serves no real good having three domains all saying the same thing.  I prefer this year to have every site I post to having something different from the other two.  Last year I saw the problems of overdoing the cross-posting and duplicating content, which devalued the content I posted.  This year, original content on every blog I use.

It's even something that's applicable to social media.  If you have one site aggregating all your different services, just take a look at what happens when all your Twitter updates are repeated and duplicated by identi.ca and/or Facebook and even Plurk.  It gets kind of annoying and boring looking at six identical versions of the one tweet.

They're quickly discovering that over at Google Buzz this week.

Buzz is making a lot of people rethink how they do their online content and whether or not they aggregate it or duplicate it.

Anyway, it never hurts to re-evaluate from time to time.  Once in a blue moon, sit back, smell the roses/coffee, then come back to your online stuff that much fresher.

Do you take a break and re-evaluate from time to time?

Let's hear some thoughts on that.

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Android 1.5 and 1.6 users now have a bonus.

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Have you tried out Google Buzz yet?

I can know Darren Rowse has, after seeing his Buzzes this afternoon.

I also know Ange Recchia has, since she popped into Buzz today too.

I even had a look at the 'Nearby' tab in the mobile version this afternoon and was surprised to see there's a few in the inner suburbs of Melbourne already getting some practice at it.

Interestingly, though, I didn't recognize these people as Twitter regulars.  Then again, you don't always know people's names from quick glances of Twitter nicks.

I'm intrigued to know what people are using Buzz in its first few days and who's not.

Apart from a handful of people among my regular Twitter friends, there doesn't seem to be too big a buzz in local Twitter for it as yet.  Perhaps that's because Buzz is technically a competitor to Twitter.  Contrasted to that are the people I know from Friendfeed who are enjoying the similarities to their old service.

So let's here some feedback on what the average Twitter user thinks of Buzz.

And yes, I'll be quite happy to hear any "buzz" joke you can think of.

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The first day using Google Buzz shows it's everything we would like Wave to be.

It's fast, for one thing.

As yet, I'm still waiting for my Gmail account to be connected to Buzz and about the only practice I'm getting on it is through the mobile version. Even so, I'm liking what I see.

When the Gmail connection is live, I'll be able to take a better look at what it's like for sharing pictures and/or video.  In the meantime, I'm already noting how Mashable is already using Buzz to give updates on their articles.  They're already doing something constructive with it there.

So far it's been good to join some conversations with Google Reader contacts and in this regard, it's much like Friendfeed, a service I'm still active on.  So if I've picked up Friendfeed pretty well, the learning curve for Buzz will be quite minimal.

Google profile is where I'm seeing my updates the best, with Buzz threads showing up currently as messages containing one thread, as opposed to one small message.  As I'm still waiting for the full connection on any other computer, there's a limit to how much I can describe, although the mobile Buzz web app is a good start.

The mobile interface is very effective, but it took a few minutes to work out I had to click on the thread-starter's profile to be able to add a coment or a like.

As you first login to the mobile version of Buzz, a small popup tells you how to turn it into a mobile bookmark on your iPhone's homescreen.  From there you can read through your contacts' buzzes or you can check who's updated nearby.

It's only the first day of Buzz yet, but it's off to a good start as far as I'm concerned.

As a "Wave Lite," Buzz works.

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Last week there was some talk of a young blogger being fired from Techcrunch for crossing an ethical line.

The blogger in question is said to have solicited expensive gifts from the companies he was assigned to report on.

Techcrunch head honcho Michael Arrington addressed the issue in this article after firing the young man in question and deleting all Techcrunch posts written by him.

In general terms the young writer writer was paid to report on tech startups in America.  Nowhere in his job description was any allowance for enticing a company to pay for a new computer if he gave them a favorable write-up

There's an added element to this that we in Australia might not be quite so tuned into...the fact that the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. brought in mandatory disclosure rules back on December 1 2009.

Techcrunch, anyway, were required under the new rules to address the young blogger's antics.

With the shift to greater amounts of online media, some consumer-protection laws once applying just to print and media now also apply online.

It also puts some online businesses on notice to lift their game.

One article on the net shows its impact on the affiliate marketing industry in the States.

Perhaps this has been long overdue.  While parts of affiliate marketing are run ethically, there are other sections little better than Ponzi schemes or pyramid scams.

However, it affects blogging, too.  This next article shows the effect on bloggers and even celebrity endorsements.

These rules are for America, but perhaps it's good if we're aware of them here in Australia too.  We'll probably come across our own version of them sooner or later.

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At a housing workshop in Kinglake West last July, I talked with some of the locals about how the telecommunications infrastructure in that region had been rendered inoperable as the Black Saturday bushfires destroyed the local towers.

Yesterday, the anniversary of Black Saturday, I talked to another local at the same Kinglake West hall and heard about how even landline phones stopped that horrible day in February 2009.

The sad part about current telecoms technology is that it is vulnerable to natural disaster.  It can be knocked out by bushfire, by earthquake (rare in Victoria Australia, but frequent in other countries) or by anything that can wipe out terrestrial communications systems.

I won't criticize telcos for such cases.  But I might recommend they eventually look to systems less prone to being wiped by natural disasters at some stage.

In an age where the mobile phone is supplanting the ever-reliable cabled landline, it's important to look at the need for good mobile/cellular communications even in country areas...especially when they're the only thing possible for someone to be warned of an impending bushfire.  It's BEFORE a bushfire you need your mobile phone to be able to get a signal in such areas.

At the Kinglake West hall last July, Virgin/Optus worked enough for me to use a GPRS signal for my wireless internet.  On the same day, a shift of a few metres rendered one bar of Telstra NextG signal useless.  Yesterday,  my new mobile carrier, Vodafone, registered "No Signal" in Flowerdale and only five minutes of one-bar signal in the centre of Kinglake.

In my home town of Bairnsdale Vodafone gets a strong Edge presence, while Optus and GPRS make internet usage via wireless dongle almost as much fun as watching a snail race. The town is at least on one of the major highways.

Up on the mountain, north of Melbourne and not very close to a major highway, mobile service is so patchy it makes you miss the days of analogue mobiles and CDMA.

Sadly, newer technologies miss out on range and not every country-dweller lives on a highway.

Should our country cousins miss out on decent mobile signal?  If one thing was shown us by a year ago, no they should not.

It's one thing if a natural disaster affects telecoms.  It's another if you don't have great mobile systems in some areas because you don't think such areas "profitable."

Yet, if a corporation trades in our country, it's not that bad an idea to put something back into the local community.  If you show your social credentials, we're more likely to buy from you.

So...Telstra, Vodafone and Optus...have a think about it.  Could you be doing a better job providing GOOD telecommunications in such country towns especially after Black Saturday, giving us the tools to be warned about impending disaster?  And could we have saner roaming costs that aren't so prohibitive that we switch roaming off?

Really, guys, give it a think.  Before we ever see any natural disaster as bad as Black Saturday ever again.  You may save lives and customers by doing so.

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Flowerdale.  Sunday February 7, 2010.  Anniversary of Black Saturday.

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Kinglake.  February 7, 2010.  Anniversary of Black Saturday.

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This morning I listened to Melbourne FoxFM's breakfast show with Matt Tilley and Jo Stanley which was broadcasting from Kinglake.

Throughout the show they talked to people who'd faced the horror of February 7th last year.

Matt and Jo are both parents.  So it must have been hard for them to hear from people who'd lost partners and children during the horrific bushfires that day.  You could hear it in their tone, how much it touched them on a deep level.

It was hard to hear a father and husband describe surviving the ordeal and losing his wife and children that day, just metres from the safety of a dam.

Last year, I got involved with Twitter working to help a niece in Gippsland who came within a hundred metres of danger that first day of the fires.  I came out of that period with a family spread over four areas safe...but today I listened to men who'd similarly tried to do their best to save their loved ones, only to tragically lose them.  They too had worked so hard, especially right there in the danger zone.  They gave their guts worth.  They made supreme efforts to try to beat the odds.

Up in the worst-affected areas, there are some miraculous tales of survival against those odds.  But the thing with fate is...the same amount of effort to save lives doesn't always end up with the same result.

I'm a father myself.  And I shed tears this morning listening to the gentleman in the example a few paragraphs above.

I got an idea of what survivors' guilt must feel like.

One item on the Matt and Jo show did raise an eyebrow when one person mentioned that there was an expectation of "moving on" from the events of last year.

Excuse me for saying this, but it's ignorance to expect someone to move on in so quick a time from such horrific experiences.

Healing from such experiences by the first anniversary is an impossibility.  The first anniversary is a milestone in the recovery...and the first year after such losses is always the worst.  Give these people at least five years to fully heal.  Don't rush the natural healing process.  Let them at least get through this first year before having expectations of them even beginning to start moving forward.

Interestingly, these same people will not only eventually recover, they will probably go on to have a greater empathy for others in different disasters.  They'll turn their worst experience eventually into a positive that helps people in later situations.

If you've never lost anything major in your life, if you weren't affected even directly by February 7 last year...try and remember these people lost everything.  They especially lost the most important thing, their loved ones.  Try and realistically imagine how you'd be if you lost everything you held so dear, even in spite of your best efforts.

Helping these people recover is better assisted by understanding the process of grieving and recovery.

Getting past the first anniversary is the start.

Related Articles:

Anniversary of Black Saturday

When Accidents Cause Fire

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I received a HTC Magic for my birthday and for a few weeks both my partner and my iPhone were jealous of the time I spent with it.

My missus' response wasn't exactly helped by the term used for 'jailbreaking' an Android-based phone.  In America it's a pretty innocent term, relating to gaining root access to the filesystem on such a phone and getting a bit more functionality out of it..  Here in Australia, the term is a euphemism for horizontal tango.

So telling my partner I was thinking of "rooting the android" got quite a nasty look from her.

I would not be at all surprised if Australian readers all keeled over laughing at the above sentence.  However, our Yankee friends would be asking why we were all laughing.

That said, I'm back to spending more time with both my partner and my  iPhone this week, although I've been keeping up on some developments for the Magic and other Android devices.

The Android OS for mobile phones is a Linux variant, though today's news points out that it is forking just a tad too much from the main Linux development.

At the heart of any Linux distribution is the kernel, which helps the hardware and the software communicate and interact.  You fine-tune any Linux distribution to your specific hardware by re-compiling the kernel and adjusting things more specifically.  The Wikipedia article linked to just above gives a more detailed explanation.

Up to now, Android utilized the 2.6 version of the Linux Kernel and there had been Google code contributed back into the community kernel.  Today that code was removed.

There are some things specific to Android you don't find in other Linuxes.  Android does not use X-Windows as its graphic interface, for example. One viewpoint for that and other difference between Linux and Android is explained here. Then there's the C programming language.  It isn't officially supported on Android, whereas it's key to almost all Linuxes. Instead it uses bionic.  Even the virtual machine differs from standard Java, using the Dalvik Virtual Machine and not supporting implementations of Java even found on Nokia phones.

All that aside, Android driver code is differing so much from the main Linux Kernel tree that there would be incompatibilities if it were a part of the main kernel.  There may or may not be some amount of politics to it, but in the end just the examples above show where you can't call it a mainline Linux.  It'll be up to the Google and Linux people to sort it out from there.

Kind of makes me glad I just utilize an Android phone, not develop for it.

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In the months before the announcement of the Apple iPad, I was reading about Techcrunch prototyping something called the Crunchpad.

Unfortunately, the Crunchpad never made it to market in the end.  The full story on why is told here, while the device under a different name is explained here.

Tablet computers are an intriguing subject, especially now the iPad has been created.  They've been around in some form or another the past decade, though here in Australia you'd be lucky to ever see one.

Apparently they seem to do well in some niche markets like medicine.

I am kind of surprised they haven't been picked up more by the art/graphics community.  Drawing directly on a screen would actually be more preferable to drawing on a digitizing tablet seperate from the screen.  I should know...I've tried various ways to do computer graphics and I'm still partial to a Palm or PocketPC and stylus.  I just hate the SIZE of such screens.

Hmm...just realized I should patent or bag intellectual property on the idea of a tablet screen for drawing...

Jokes aside, up to now the timing hasn't been right for mainstream tablets.

What's different now is the netbook market has opened some ground, so it comes down to making a tablet that does something netbooks can't and which has popular appeal.

Is it the tablet's time at last?  Deloitte Digital seems to think so.

Steve Jobs has aimed the iPad at those people who normally shy away from other computers, but who still want to do email, video watching and music listening.  Oh, and who also like gaming.  Your granny should be able to do all these things on the iPad within the first ten minutes and be enjoying it in fifteen.

Jobs, then, is aiming at the right people, those millions or billions who just want something that works for simple email, video, music, gaming and web-browsing without needing an MSCE qualification.

Others, of course, want a tablet which does the same things as Windows 7 and Mac OS X in a slate form factor.  Except, we've had those on the Windows side of things and they haven't taken off that well outside of niches. Will the HP Slate work with Windows 7 to change that?  We'll know soon enough.

It may still come down more to what's actually on a tablet than the actual hardware.

So what else do we have in tablet options? Do we have a middle ground or third path?

Today the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out Google's Chrome OS as a potential operating system for tablet computers.

Then there's Android, already making waves on mobile phones and some netbooks.

Combined with NVidia's Tegra chipset, Android-based tablets could still make a huge impact.

Of course, just reading about a Dell Android mini-tablet makes me cringe a little.  A five-inch screen-size?  Naw, that doesn't float my boat.  Give me seven-to-ten inches of screen and I might consider it.

Here's one prototype shown at CES, great Android OS, great Tegra chip, but let down by some other parts of the hardware.

Engadget has an article about the second generation of the Tegras here.

The ICD Vega demonstrates one of the better Tegra-based Android tablets, avaialbe in both capacitive and resistive touchscreens.

Enough different things are coming together to bring tablet computing out of the niches.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to my first tablet especially if it enables better drawing than the Palm or PocketPC allowed me.

The iPad is already on the shopping list as two other members of my family want it, not just me...you should see my missus and the nine-year-old drooling over that iPad.  It's already a hit with its intended audience and it hasn't even been sold yet.

Related articles:

Sim, Sim, Sim...iPad Sims

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It's a sad fact of life that accidents can and do happen.

Although a few of the Black Saturday fires a year ago are thought to have been deliberately lit, one fire seems to have occurred because of an electrical fault.

The Kilmore fire eventually merged with one of the others, causing a huge loss of life...but it was apparently started by a hanging conductor on a Kilmore East power pole.  The fire started two minutes after the fault had been reported.

The span in question, according to one report, is a kilometre long.  It's like a lot of power lines and equipment around the state.  Some sections have equipment dating back to the sixties, some are more recently upgraded and maintained.

This was a fire that started with no conscious human malicious intent.

That aside, the amount of deaths caused was significant.

In the year since, the company responsible for that section of line has been incredibly quick to get repair crews out to faults, as shown in this article.  If any good came out of a year ago, this company treats very seriously how quickly a fault on the lines has to be solved before it becomes a problem or danger to human life.

Sadly, even mere accidents can cost lives.

This is another important thing to remember just on one year after Black Saturday.

Lest we forget.

Related Articles:

Anniversary of Black Saturday

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While all the world discusses the revolutionary (yes, that's said with tongue-in-cheek) Apple iPad, at the moment there's been a little bit of a kerfuffle between Amazon and MacMillan before we've even seen an Amazon Kindle versus iPad contest.

It seems McMillan wanted to put the price of ebooks up and go with an agency model.

What does that mean in English for the ordinary buyer?

A bit more expense.  In U.S. dollar terms, that's between $US12-$US15 for ebooks of bestsellers and new hardcovers.

I guess I'll never whinge about the price I charge on my own novel ever again.

I tended to experiment with the print-on-demand model, with a price of around $US10 for the physical book and around $US2.60 for the ebook versions.

Anyway, Amazon originally started by yanking MacMillan titles, only to quickly about-face and allow MacMillan titles again, vaguely hoping the higher pricing would be reflected in how buyers react to the high price.

I'd be very interested to hear what general readers thing is a fair price for an ebook.  Should it be almost as high as a physical hard copy...or should it be less expensive in the electronic form?

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Seven days' time marks the anniversary of the worst disaster Victorians have faced.

February 7 a year ago was Black Saturday...the hottest day not only of last year, but of all time since records started.  It became six weeks of hell for almost everyone.  If not especially for those in the disaster areas, for those who knew someone who was.  Very few Victorians could not be unaffected as they knew friends or relatives who had either died or who were in the displaced.

In one way, it brought about an incredible community spirit as Victorians and even non-Victorians struggled to find any way they could to help.

Social media especially was utilized to provide ways to keep expatriate Victorians informed, to take some of the pressure off over-burdened CFA systems, or simply just to get as much timely information out as possible of any new fire danger.

We'd already seen how Twitter was utilized in other situations around the world, but with the Victorian bushfires, Australians worked to make it even more effective as an information system.  Mashups with Google maps and other satellite mapping systems were brought into play and even Twitpics sent from some areas close to fires helped provide what was needed.

One name cropped up on Twitter showing a huge concern for one little town...@rexster.  When I first saw his tweets on the situation in Flowerdale, I didn't know if he was a country bumpkin or a CEO, but he kept tweeting of what was happening in Flowerdale and how he was trying to get some supplies into the place to help them save what they had left.  I remember putting out a tweet on the relevant hashtag that said:  "How can we help this guy do something for Flowerdale?"

The guy was actually Pete Williams, CEO of Deloitte Digital, as I found out a week or two later.

What Flowerdale went through is best described here.

Of course, Kinglake was also amongst the worst towns hit by the fires.

A few weeks after the fires were no longer a danger, I took a near-dusk trip to Kinglake with my family, travelling along the St. Andrews road.  It's a narrow, meandering road, not really much trouble for the driving skills of someone who was taught in the hills of East Gippsland.  It wasn't the driving that bothered me.  It was the sight of the burnt trees against the fading light.

The St. Andrews to Kinglake road had no lights on it once we left St. Andrews.  Not one.  Against what little light there was, we could see blackened, broken trees.  It's a sight that no tweet or news report can really, truly describe.  Needless to say, after we got to Kinglake and stopped for some fish-and-chips, we took the better, safer road out the other side, via Whittlesea.

However, that was in dark.  A few months later I saw the Whittlesea road in daylight.

In July, Pete Williams got me to film the Sustainable Housing workshop in Kinglake.

Sure, grass had regrown on the floor of that bushland.  There were new leaves on the trees.

But the trees themselves were still black.  And they still are, as seen a few weeks ago on the last drive I took to the area.

You leave Whittlesea and for a couple of kilometres you still see untouched road.  Then you cross one particular hill and then the wrecked trees start.

You see the blackened trees on the hills underneath the new foliage.

However, on the last trip there a few weeks ago, I saw the rebuilding.  New houses popping up on places that were flattened or empty back in July.

My favorite thing this last visit to Kinglake was seeing one impromptu sign that read:  "Welcome to Kinglake...the town that STILL refuses to die."

I especially pointed that out to the nine-year-old...explaining to him that no matter what disaster there is in life, the most important thing is to bounce back from it.

Next weekend, I want to visit both Flowerdale and Kinglake on the anniversary of Black Saturday.  As all of us in Victoria remember the lifes lost.

One year later, let's hope we've learned something.

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I was intending to wait till April to get a 3G iPad, so I could use my 3 Mobile data plan with it.

However, in reading the latest tech news I made a discovery about the type of sim card the iPad will be using.  Instead of the sim card we're currently accustomed to, the iPad will be using a micro-sim.

I'd say a collective shudder just occurred around Australia.

In the States, it looks like AT&T will be the only telco with such a sim ready.  Therefore even American iPad users will find their 3G options limited.

In serious terms, we can't even use our iPhone sims and their attendant data plans unless we want to chop our normal-sized sims down to the micro size.  While we could keep the outer part of the original sim as an adapter, you can imagine what our sims will be like in such a condition. That's not so bad with some mobile phones, but it might be a real pain returning a chopped sim to the iPhone sim holder.

Not fun at all, eh?

Oh well, guess I'll be looking at the wifi-only model and just using it around the house.

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Last night the sister  domain to this site went live at www.georgehallonline.com.

This afternoon (Melbourne Australia time) www.geehall1.com became a reality.

Of course, a Saturday in Melbourne or a Friday night in the U.S. is the usual time you see those wonderful little gremlins come into play, so I still have to wait a small amount of time to connect the domain with the actual posting page.

That aside, after a year of developing in social media through Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, identi.ca and a couple of others, it was time to take the dotcom plunge.  They say nobody really takes you seriously until you get the dotcom address.

Then again, 2009 on Twitter was an effective apprenticeship, as was blogging on wordpress.com and blogger.  It was important to spend some time honing craft and doing some experiential learning.

This year, 2010, it's time to take the next step and build from that first year's base.  Domain, greater regularity in posts, and further exploring of where things can go.

Above all else, I'm here to stay in the online world.  My method is step-at-a-time, starting with last year's foundations in the various social media services I use.  For those who've been following the geehall1 stable on those services, you already know my work, either with emergency information relay during last year's bushfires, or through my video interviews with the Tweetupmellers/Twums functions.

There's still more to explore and do.  While it's worn thanks to reality TV shows, the word "journey" still applies here.

It's a journey of exploration and discovery.

Feel free to join me in that voyage.

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