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Australian Soldier Dies

My petty whinging about iPhone prices and data really means nothing. My thoughts go out to the family of the recently killed Australian Solder. Since I have a number of family and friends whom are serving members (some overseas) – I have a very small idea how they must feel. I’m an ex-military and ex-Signaller myself: so I know how committed one can be to the job and the corps.

iPhone choices

As I posted late last night – Vodafone had not announced their pricing. They did – then retracted it. This is a major factor for an IT and tech geek who currently uses Vodafone. I’m now seriously thinking of taking my business to Telstra (I use them for Cable and Internet already – so…?!). I have partially ruled Optus out due to their lack of non-metro coverage and decisions to expand their 3G using 900Mhz technologies.

iPhone – Vodafone Australia leaves it too late

If Vodafone Australia don’t release their iPhone pricing/data or respond to my Pre-registration ASAP (and I mean by midday Wednesday only 48 hours before launch) I’m going to unfortunately have to go elsewhere. What is the point of their pre-registration when: One hears nothing back from it except a “Watch your inbox” One goes into a Central Melbourne Vodafone shop and they say “We are not owned by Vodafone so don’t know about pre-registration or when the pricing is available” One rings the Vodafone Connect number and can NOT find any option – menu – or area that will answer your iPhone questions Optus and Vodafone 3G offerings outside Metro areas will use 900Mhz – WTF Carriers!

Server Migration complete

I’ve had an on/off outage for most of the past 4 days, so to avoid hassles I put the site into maintenance mode. I’ve actually had to decommission my 19″ server rack and the multiple servers I had for Tech Debug. There was a DNS server, kerberos, Database and web server. All the separate functions are now hosted on one OpenBSD VM that I’ve built recently. It’s running on the only remaining “non-laptop” left in my residence, which runs 24×7.

Twitter WordPress plugin – Autolink to Username

Developed initally on WordPress 2.3, it has successfully been tested on WordPress 2.7.1. Most of the other plugins out there either did this only in their “badge” or “widget” or where too full featured. This is a simple and quick plugin to get links in place to twitter people for the lazy blogger. Visit my plugin page, give it a try and let me know what you think.

Telstra has rights to Sell iPhone on Australia

Telstra have now announced they will be selling the iPhone as well. According to the Age, since Telstra’s NextG network covers 99% of the population the iPhone will get good coverage due to it using the 850Mhz 3G frequencies. Additionally the Age have reported on the pricing Telstra will offer on their bundles: The cheapest monthly plan will be $30, paying either $279 upfront for an eight-gigabyte iPhone or $399 for a 16Gb model.

Textmate Posting Hiccup

Forgive my triple Post Hiccup. When Textmate posted my blog posts, I got errors. Thinking the post had not completed, I retried until I figured out the problem. If you use WordPress V2.3 and post with Textmate, then don’t try to add a new category when posting an article. You get this problem: <br /> Fatal error: Cannot use object of type WP_Error as array in wp-includes/taxonomy.php on line 1010<br /> Looks like I am not the only one.

Australian iTunes Store offers TV Shows

Practically un-announced, Apple have made available a limited number of TV shows on the Australian iTunes Music Store. While I commend the move, I have to question their pricing. The US store offers TV shows @{.tweet-username} USD$1.99 per episode (with Some more expensive) The Australian Store offers the episodes @{.tweet-username} AUD$2.99, which equates to approximately USD$2.85. Why the difference? You can’t tell me Apple has set-up different infrastructure and have different hosting for Media in Australia.

iPhone pre-registration in Australia

Apple now have links to two of the major carriers in Australia from their Australian iPhone website. Telstra are, not surprisingly, missing from this list. My preference is Vodafone so I clicked through and pre-registered with them. You can do so too at their pre-registration page – and apparently a sales rep will call you back. I’m currently with them on the $79 cap, so I should be able to carry right on and hopefully get the best data plan possible.