add on some Add-ons
Have you been checking out the fring add-ons? Check out the fring.com website’s Add-on catalog here.
My favourite is the Gmail notifier.
'fring AddOn for Gmail'
Here’s one of our famous fring videos on Add-ons…
tele -phone
Simon, on the fring main blog has a fun piece about mobile phone telescopes. Well, you can see one in action here.
Or you can read all about them here.
fring in the news
fring-Add Ons made the news on CNET’s Webware site. See here for more.
next time your boss wants you to do powerpoint…
The Sydney Morning Herald reports “…research shows the human brain processes and retains more information if it is digested in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time.”
That’s my excuse.
erasmus on blogging
(Image source here. Image from Lo Van den Berg, used with permission)
Here’s a quote from Erasmus written in 1522.
“…the life of those who like myself write books is no better than that of the actors of antiquity who presented a play on the stage before the public. They had to learn their parts, to rehearse their production, to do all that was humanly possible to satisfy their audience- that motley throng, truly a beast of many heads, few of whose members have the same tastes, nor are they always consistent, and, what is worse, the greater part of them are led by prejudice rather than judgment. On their thumbs the poor mountebank is wholly dependent; he must worship the lowest of the mob, and after superhuman exertions thinks himself happy if he has secured a hearing for his play. If he is hissed off the stage, he must find a tree and hang himself. Surely books have to face critics who are no less various, no less difficult to please, no less distorted by prejudice. In one way our fate is the more unfair, in that we put on our show at our own expense, while the actors get their fee. And they, if the dance is a failure, merely look foolish; we, if we fail to please, are heretics.”
I didn’t know Erasmus was a blogger!
happy birthday to the transistor
“IN DECEMBER 1947, Bells Labs scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain first revealed what would come to be known as the transistor.They held the future in their hands - a device that would replace vacuum tubes in 10 years, and 60 years later has transformed electronics.Inventions change things; great inventions change everything. That first device was the size of a modern mobile phone…”
In case you want to organise your own celebrations, you could either celebrate next month or maybe wait until next year. After Bell Labs first invented the transistor, they kept it under wraps until June 1948. (See here for some history). Either way the transistor will soon have it’s 60th birthday. Melbourne’s The Age has an excellent commemorative article here. And PBS has a great historical site here.
How many transistors do you own? The answer is actually a little overwhelming. I wouldn’t be buying each one of them a present!
broadband comparisons international
The IT and business press usually has all sorts of stories about which country has better broadband. And we’ve all heard stories about better service somewhere else. Well this recently issued report from WebOptimization.Com seems quite comprehensive. And surprise, surprise Australia’s broadband infrastructure and performance compares well internationally under most category headings. Still we’d all like faster and cheaper. Will this win many office arguments? Probably not.
congratulations flickr
Flickr.com is certainly a flagship of the Web 2.0 world. Like fring, Flickr has been enpowering regular people with the new web technologies. Anyhow Flickr has just had it’s 2 billionth digital photograph uploaded. And the image was taken here in Australia, near Sydney’s Haymarket district Chinatown.
The image is actually of a dead tree trunk sculpture called the Golden Water Mouth (open this image with the All Sizes tag to read the inscription) . Golden Water Mouth is said to bring good luck to Sydney’s Chinese community. Certainly the two billionth image represents good luck to Flickr.
Flickr, founded in Feb. 2004, reached it’s first billion images earlier this year and took only three months to reach the second billion.
