Optus is hosting a G9-sponsored electronic petition against Telstra's attempts to monopolise the next generation of Australian broadband, over at Fair Go Broadband.

The site is calling for members of the public to sign the petition, which says in part:

There is a clear and present danger that in its rush to roll out the National Broadband Network (NBN), the Government will give away critical competition and consumer safeguards. This would see Telstra regain its monopoly control of fixed line voice and broadband; drive much higher broadband prices; and in turn keep broadband usage well below its potential.

The site is authorised by 10 telcos including Optus, iinet and Internode, and also links to the T4: Tell the Truth Telstra website.
Would be amusing to compare and contrast with Telstra's propaganda blog, Now We Are Talking. If you're a telco blog junkie anyway. :)

Mac OS X only: Fresh from the Google Mac workshop, new video application Vidnik records clips with your Mac's camera and uploads them directly to YouTube.

You can use Vidnik to create a video diary, or just to quickly record a video comment to attach to an existing YouTube video. Vidnik works with the built-in video cameras on recent Macs, with FireWire video cameras, and with many USB video cameras.

You can also drag and drop existing video clips on your Mac into the left column in Vidnik to use it purely as an uploader. Vidnik is a free download for Mac only.

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The majority of you told us that you prefer XP to Vista and that it'd be best if Microsoft extended its cutoff date for XP, but we can't help but wonder if there's something about Vista that's worth your while. For those of you who have made the switch—or those who have been tempted—we're curious what Vista features actually make the upgrade worthwhile for you. So let's hear what you actually like about Windows Vista that you didn't get from XP in the comments.

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Google launches a new beta version of Google Reader for the iPhone today. Navigate your folders and subscriptions in a single column, mobile-friendly view with promising load times, even over a slow connection. Visit google.com/reader/i/ to check it out on your handset or in your browser. [via]

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Car and Driver magazine knows a thing or two about getting pulled over, so they asked seven state troopers from across the Us what they want and don't want from you, the driver, during a routine traffic stop. For example, rather than preparing your licence, registration, and insurance information before the officer asks for it, "most cops don't want you to do anything except rest your hands on top of the steering wheel until directed otherwise."

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Canon Australia is launching three new IXUS models for the social or travelling photographer. The new IXUS 970 IS, 90 IS and 85 IS exemplify IXUS style and intelligence in compact, stylish camera bodies. The trio combines Optical Image Stabilizer, Motion Detection Technology and Face Detection Technology to control blurring and features an improved DiGIC III image processor.

All three boast a 10-megapixel CCD to allow poster photo prints of up to A2 size. The IXUS 970 IS (RRP: $549) leads the charge with 5x Optical Zoom and includes a Safety Zoom function to avert image degradation when shooting distant subjects. The IXUS 90 IS (RRP: $479) incorporates a chiselled design with a vibrant three-inch Pure Colour LCD display. The final addition, the IXUS 85 IS (RRP: $429) commands portability as the slimmest model in the IXUS series. All three models are available nationally now.

Windows only: Analyse your hard drive usage and find out what's eating up your disk space with freeware application DriveSpacio. Similar to previously mentioned WinDirStat, DriveSpacio sets itself apart with a different approach to displaying your drive usage. Many users will likely prefer the bar graphs and pie charts of DriveSpacio to WinDirStat, but the biggest drawback is that—unlike WinDirStat—it doesn't currently allow you to directly delete or launch a folder from within its interface. That means that once you find something you want to delete, you still have to navigate to it manually in Explorer to delete it. Regardless, the freeware, Windows only DirveSpacio is a great alternative when you're looking to visualise your hard drive usage. Mac users, check out previously mentioned GrandPerspective.

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Health weblog SmarterFitter knows how difficult it can be to buy healthy food once you hit the supermarket, so they've created a couple of grocery list templates designed to help you stick to the good stuff. The list breaks down items into helpful shopping categories, leaving a little room in each for your own additions. You're probably already aware of the time you can save by using a grocery list template in the first place, but these templates from SmarterFitter will also help save a little time in the gym.

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Blogger Albert Alberts loves a slim wallet, and after reading over some of our wallet-slimming tips, he realised he had a powerful wallet-slimming tool in his pocket all the time: his iPhone. His idea? Rather than reducing his membership cards to just one club card, he scanned his membership cards to his computer, then synced them to his iPhone as an album called WalletCards. According to the post, his phone-friendly cards even scan successfully. You're still going to be at the mercy of whether or not the workers are willing to accept your scanned cards, but if they are, you can carry around all the membership cards you want without adding any bulk to your wallet.

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Firefox and Internet Explorer only: The Surf Canyon browser extension embeds extra search results at Google, Yahoo, and MSN. With Surf Canyon installed, search the web with your favourite engine as usual. A bull's-eye icon will appear next to results—click it to expand another level of links related to the single result. My test for a "lifehacker" Google search was promising: Surf Canyon included links to the official Lifehacker book, Upgrade Your Life, and a life hacks site search engine at Google Coop. Surf Canyon is a free download, and it's available as both a Firefox extension and IE add-on.

In addition to your traditional checking, savings, and emergency accounts, financial weblog Get Rich Slowly suggests setting up another money bucket for irregular or unexpected expenses. Sock away money in a "Freedom Account" for expenses like clothes, vacations, and car maintenance. Setting this money apart from your regular monthly bills ensures you keep a tighter rein on what you spend on irregular expenses, and it also helps you set savings goals for larger purchases. Whether or not you're already doing something along these lines, let's hear how you track and manage your irregular expenses in the comments.

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You don't have to mod your classic Xbox to run the best free media centre application around anymore: Dedicated developers have ported the Xbox Media Centre (XBMC) software to the Mac, and its killer features will convince you to abandon Front Row forever. The latest XBMC on OS X beta dropped last week, and it's as stable and useful as ever. Dubbed the "throw out your Xbox" release, XBMC for Mac 0.5 beta 1 adds the key feature that finally puts your media centre Mac under the TV where it belongs: remote control support. Let's take a look at how you can (and why you want to) replace Front Row with XBMC on your Mac.

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Web surfing game PMOG (The Passively Multiplayer Online Game) just opened up user registrations to the public. PMOG, a social surfing game, lets you rack up points and leave gifts and traps for your friends on web pages as you surf. Install the PMOG Firefox extension and make your surfing, ahem, more (virtually) productive by earning points. Then use your points to buy things like mines, treasure, and armour that you can leave as gifts or traps for your friends as they land on various web pages. See PMOG in action after the jump.

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Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Alliance, a free, open-source, cross-platform peer-to-peer application, takes nearly all of the security and privacy concerns out of peer-to-peer file sharing by putting you in charge of your own network. The dead-simple interface lets you add Alliance-using friends to your network and files on your system to share, and you can search, chat, and download like any other peer-to-peer app. The traffic between clients is encrypted at a low level, but you can apply an experimental SSL layer if you'd like a bit more protection from snooping. For trading files with co-workers or friends, it's a nice no-overhead solution. Alliance is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux systems.

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Now that you know how to stitch together panoramic photos with free software, publish your creations at Panoye, a panoramic sharing web site. Panoye users are building "a virtual tour all around Earth" with user-submitted panoramic images. Upload, tag, geotag, and share your panoramas on Panoye, which offers YouTube-like HTML markup to embed a pannable panoramic image onto your own web site, like the one after the jump:

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The default prompt in Windows' Command Prompt isn't the easiest to read, but Microsoft has a font, Consolas, that works much better in a terminal, as attested to by our commenters. The Digital Inspiration blog runs down how to set Consolas as the default font in your command prompt. Vista users can perform a registry hack to enable their pre-installed Consolas, but XP users without Office 2007 can download the PowerPoint viewer to grab all the Vista fonts. Hit the link for installation and registry-tweaking instructions.

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The publisher of Australasian Camcorder magazine, David Hague, has shared some tips for how to build a survival kit for when you'll be trying to take photos or video while on the road. He's pretty serious about his images - he says he chooses between three different backpacks:

"One is used for in-the-field video trips, a second for casual day to day use where an opportunity may happen to get a shot or video and the third is when I am seriously going away for a week or so."

His list of supplies includes the stuff you'd expect, like backup batteries and SD cards, but also have some other items you might not have thought of, to help you solve any problems you might come across like inclement weather:

• jeweller's screwdriver kit
• dry socks
• sealable plastic bags as emergency camera 'raincoats'
• basic first aid kit
• lens cleaning kit

Hit the link to see the full list. You can tell David was once a boy scout, can't you. :) Got any other items to mention that you carry with you in search of the perfect image? Share in comments please.

Video and photography survival kit [Hydrapinion]

Martial arts master Bruce Lee was obviously a man who could accomplish lofty self-set goals, and the Little Dragon's principles of effort and work can apply to those cranking widgets rather than besting Chuck Norris. The Positivity Blog highlights some of his writings and teachings and how they apply to everyday work, including these simple concepts:

"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential."
"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done."

As the post author points out, that applies to both de-cluttering your work routines and space, as well as over-thinking problems to procrastinate them. If nothing else, Lee's advice serves as more, uh, intimidating credos to keep posted near your desk. Photo by SqueezyBoy.

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Linux only: Free multimedia note organizer BasKet takes a page from Microsoft's OneNote, along with a good portion of Getting Things Done-style organisation, to offer an all-in-one spot to drop your thoughts and next actions. You can quickly paste in text and images, sure, but you can also set up launchers to open files with particular programs, grab a section of your screen to paste up, and grab text from files. BasKet also runs as a desktop widget, and offers a pre-built GTD package for help in getting yourself oriented. BasKet is a free download for Linux systems, and requires a number of KDE libraries to run. Thanks, Mark!