Wednesday, January 9, 2008
CES
4:48PM Sarah Stokely | While we’re toiling away Down Under, our pals at Gizmodo are at the CES show in Las Vegas checking out all the new tech, including 10 bizarre Wii weapons, and ASUS’ next gen Eee PC, which has an 8.9 inch screen. If you missed it, Bill Gates’ spoof retirement video, shown as part of his keynote, is good fun. Look out for cameos from Bono, Al Gore and George Clooney, among others. More » 
Macworld
4:26PM Sarah Stokely | Macworld is on next week and Wired has published its predictions for the announcements we’ll hear from Mr Jobs and Co. Wired expects Apple will use the San Francisco event to announce a swap of software updates for Leopard, Microsoft Office for Mac and of course the iPhone. iTunes movie rentals and support for HD content are also on the cards, but forgive me if I’m more keen to find out when we’ll get the iPhone in Oz. More »TiVo
1:33PM Sarah Stokely | The SMH has published an interview with TiVo’s international general
manager, Joshua Danovitz, who confirmed that TiVo in Australia will be able to record all free to air channels. While he was cagey about the exact pricing
and launch date, he confirmed we’ll get the high-end series 3 version of the device. The series 3 contains dual
high-definition TV tuners, so users can record two shows at
once while at the same time watching a previously recorded show. He also passed on the question of whether we’ll get the coveted ad-skipping function but it’s unlikely. TiVo is expected to launch locally before August, in time for the Olympics.
More » 
Shop around to get the cheapest petrol prices
12:06PM Sarah Stokely | If you want to save money on your
petrol costs, you need to shop around to find which of your local
service stations is the cheapest. And plan ahead to make sure you buy
at the cheap time of the week too.
You can search for cheap petrol prices
in you area using independent website MotorMouth, which tracks prices from around 3,500 petrol stations across
Australia, and updates prices twice daily.
If you register at the site you can get
a free daily email alert or sign up for the paid SMS service.
The SMS service costs a minimum of
$4.95, which gets you 20 SMS credits. You’ll need to nominate up to
25 service stations in your list of Favourites. When you SMS for a
price, it will send back the details of the six servos on your
Favourites list which have the cheapest current petrol prices.If
you happen to be with Telstra’s NextG mobile network however, you
have access to this information for free. In the browser menu of
Telstra services, select the Travel section and then My Fuel.
MotorMouth covers Brisbane, the
Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Prices are updated twice a day at around 8.15am (9am on
Sunday) and 3pm in the afternoon.
So what kind of savings can you expect?
A web search of my postcode turned up 6 local servos, and there was a
5c/L price difference between the cheapest and the most expensive.
But the prices can vary a great deal more than that across the city
- according to MotorMouth, Sydney’s cheapest recorded price for
unleaded petrol today was 130.9c, and the highest was 146.9c.
After the jump, we have a couple of
tips from MotorMouth for finding cheap petrol prices – including which day is the cheapest for buying petrol.
More » 
Watch Full-Length TV Online with Fancast
12:00PM Adam Pash | Watch full episodes of anything from Battlestar Galactica to Buffy (that’s just the B’s, people) with web site Fancast. Brought to you by cable provider Comcast, Fancast follows in the footsteps of sites like Hulu (or OpenHulu) and the episode-streaming offerings already offered by the big three networks. Then Fancast takes things a step further, going well beyond simple video streaming by integrating movies and other services into the site. For example, Fancast also directs you to Amazon or iTunes to buy a DVD, Netflix or Blockbuster to add it to your queue, or to Fandango to buy tickets if what you searched is still in theaters. The site can be confusing, but it’s a strong start. While you’re getting your TV fix, check out six more ways to catch your favorite shows online. FanCast More »Create a backup for your Google accounts
11:12AM Sarah Stokely | We missed this little gem over the Christmas break but it’s worth passing on for the Google heads out there. The Google Operating System blog has written up a guide for creating a “backup” for your various Google accounts – both to archive material such as Gmail but also to provide an alternative account if you can’t access your main account.
If you create a “backup” Gmail account, you can set up Mail Fetcher in the backup account. You’ll need to add the main account as a custom From address – then you can check or send messages from the “backup” account if needed.
You can configure your Google Calendar to let you view and update it via your “backup” account. Click on “Manage calendars” at the bottom of the
window, share the main calendar and add the backup account. You should
select “make changes and manage sharing” from the drop down menu.
And you can add the backup account as a collaborator for your important Google Docs and Notebooks.
There are a number of nifty tricks for providing yourself with backdoor access to your Google accounts – the article also covers how to enable sharing to provide ‘backdoor’ access to Blogger, Google Analytics and Google Groups.
“The backup account will not have all the data from your main account,
but you’ll still be able to read your email, send messages, post blog
posts, check your calendar, add new events, access important documents
etc.”
Nice!
Creating a Backup for your Google Account [Google Operating System] More » Turn Your Windows Mobile Phone into a Wi-Fi Router with WMWifiRouter
11:00AM Adam Pash | Windows Mobile only: Turn your Windows Mobile phone into a Wi-Fi router, providing any Wi-Fi-capable device access to your cell plan’s data network, with freeware application WMWifiRouter. Install WMWifiRouter to your phone, run the application, and it automatically sets up an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network named WMWifiRouter that you can connect your laptop—or any other wireless device—to without going through the regular pain involved in tethering an internet connection to your mobile device. My WM phone is out of the house today so I couldn’t try it out, so if you do let us know how it worked in the comments. The brilliant WMWifiRouter is freeware, still under heavy development, Windows Mobile 6 only. WMWifiRouter [via Hackszine] More »
Get started as an amateur astronomer
10:08AM Sarah Stokely | If you’re interested in astronomy, but want to find out more before investing in your own telescope, the GeekDad blog has a couple of good suggestions for how to get started. It recommends finding a local astronomy club which holds stargazing nights which are open to the public.
Quasar Publishing, publishers of Astronomy Australia hosts a list of amateur astronomy societies here, or a web search for the name of your city and “astronomy club” should do the trick.
If you have an observatory or planetarium near you, check out what they have on offer too. Sydney’s Observatory charges $15 for a night visit which is hosted by an experienced astronomer. It also runs paid night classes including one on stargazing skills which includes guidance on how to choose and use a small telescope.
The photographer’s note on the image I’ve used here says it’s a telescope image of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) taken from a backyard observatory. 12 hours total exposure time. Neat. :)
Don’t have a telescope? Borrow one! [Geek Dad] More » 
Add Actions to Spotlight
10:00AM Gina Trapani | Mac OS X only: When Mac user Adam Wilco heard about Quicksilver’s dark future, he set out to add the QS features he uses most to Spotlight. The result is Quicksilver’s ExtraScripts ported for use with Spotlight. Once you download these babies and copy them to your Applications folder, you can Sleep, Restart, Empty the Trash, or Toggle Audio right from the Spotlight search box. Of course this doesn’t make Spotlight do all the stuff Quicksilver does, but it’s a step in that direction. The ExtraScripts Spotlight port is a free download for Mac only. Quicksilver’s ExtraScripts – Spotlight Port [Adam Wilcox's WilcosWorld] More »
