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Technology

Australian Tablet Plans

I’ve looked at tablets, and I’m not too worried about the Android and Apple choice. The key thing is that it just has to work and keep on working. Basically I want a mobile data connection wherever I am. For the most part that’s in metropolitan Melbourne, most likely at home or at work.

Galaxy Tab 10.1iPad2Motorola Xoom

But the thing is I have questions, and I haven’t been able to find answers. None of the Australian mobile phone comparison sites cover tablets. Surely the concept is no different to mobile phones, just without the phone bit and anyway almost no-one uses a smart phone as a phone!

Is there anywhere that can tell me what is the best tablet plan in Australia?
Is it better to get a tablet (a GalaxyTab 10.1, an iPad or a Xoom) on plan from one of the mobile phone companies?
Does it work out cheaper to buy a 3G tablet outright and get a data plan / sim from your preferred company?
What about getting a WiFi tablet and using the saving to buy a wireless 3G hotspot?

Does anyone know? Or have I found a hole in the mobile phone comparison sites?

Ye Olde Internet Browsers

In Before Netscape: the forgotten Web browsers of the early 1990s [^] Matthew Lasar at ArsTechnica takes us back to that time to those early days and shows us how far we have come in the 18 years since Netscape’s Mosaic launched.

Before Internet Explorer, even before Netscape, there was a whole ecosystem of different browsers that were evolving. This was back in the early 1990s when the concept of the publicly accessible internet, the information superhighway, was just beginning to catching on.

Pundits were still trying to tell us that this new thing was just a passing fad and it would never catch-on, it was just too complicated. But new browsers seemed were springing up all over the place. Some of them were even able to show in-line image, rather than having to open them in new windows, then came sound and video.

ArsTechnica - Before Netscape the forgotten browsers

Is the Commodore 64 on the Comeback Trail?

I saw this just before Christmas – there are plans to launch a computer capable of loading both Windows and the 8-bit Commodore 64 operating systems [^]. Now for the really cool bit! The whole package comes packed into the classic mid1980s designed C=64 case.

Commodore64-small

Also in Windows you will still be able to play your favourite C=64 games as it comes with a Windows C=64 emulator. All in all, that means that you can play Dynamite Dan, Leisure Suit Larry, and Manic Miner until your heart’s content, and pretend to do something productive at the same time.

The new PC is powered by an Intel Atom processor, 2Gb RAM comes with DVD drive and is able to read most common memory card. A distinct improvement on the 1MHz MOA 6510 CPU, 64kb RAM and separate cassette tape storage. That means no more having to wait for some dodgy cassette tape to load in an ear-splitting cacophony, and die at the last minute. Ah, the good old days.

Of course a Google will get you a C=64 emulator for download for a normal PC, but you will have to find and hack your own case.

Internet Cables

Trans-Atlantic Cable

The Daily Mail has an interesting feature on the latest fibre optic cable [^] linking the UK and the USA.

The cable travels 3,800 miles underwater, carries 10,000 volts and is capable of covering the internet needs of 20 million people transmitting 3.2terabits of data per second! The article also has a look at the anatomy of an undersea cable, the business of repairing undersea cables and the predicted UK internet crisis of 2014. It helps you to realise how fragile and flexible the internet really is.

Image: MailOnline

A Reason to Read Twitter

It’s easy to view the events of the two World Wars with the benefit of hindsight. For some people, removed from the events by at least half a century, everything seems to lead to an inevitable win by the Allies. A triumphant win by good over evil if you will.

The Experiences of an English Soldier certainly brought the events of ninety years ago back to life for a lot of people. The life of Private Harry Lamin was revealed to us through his intermittent letters home to his family, 90 years to the day after they were written. The gaps kept everyone guessing about his fate; hoping that he would survive the war and make it home safely.

winston churchill union flag

The UK National Archive (@ukwarcabinet [^]) is following in that tradition, posting tweets from the Cabinet Papers day by day 70 years on from the original events. For anyone who wants more there are links in the tweets back to the original papers.

We have just been through the Battle and Evacuation of Dunkirk [^]. Mr Winston Churchill has just made a speech [^]: “We shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”. Plans are being made for the defence of England against the anticipated Nazi invasion, and the Battle of Britain [^] is just a month in the future.

The immediacy of watching the events as they are revealed in real-time show how delicately balanced the two sides were. So, after almost two years on Twitter [^] I have finally found a use for it – to keep up to date with the events of seventy years ago!