Category Archives: AU

CityLink eTags to be used for a reverse-toll

There’s a proposal to have Melbournians use their CityLink eTags for a reverse-toll on public transport by a economist-type guy from Melbourne Uni. I can just see homeless guys making a living by taking sackfuls of eTags around the city on trams while their owners are at work, to make the day’s commute in to work and back again net-free.

It’s an attempt to address the free rider problem of vehicular road use; he’s also proposed that the charging should be demand driven – so road tolls are higher in peak hour, and might be free in the middle of the night. But we have a crude version of this proposed roaduse charge already – it’s called fuel excise. Cars idling in traffic jams keep burning petrol, and thus their owners paying tax, as an added bonus, SUVs/4WDs burn a whole lot more of it. If you want to hike the charges up, I’m all in favour of, say, tripling the excise on fuel. That should make public transport more attractive – especially as there won’t be homeless guys with sacks!

AUSTRALIA’S FIRST WEB CHICKEN

Walking to the train station from work, saw this big red ad – and I must admit, I think my vision is going – I think it’s degenerated to the point where it’s as good as most people’s. And perhaps I’m slightly dyslexic, but I read the ad as “Australia’s first web chicken”. Perhaps I spent too much time in NZ as a child. In fact, in looking critically at it, and recalling a UI design subject I didn’t do (but damn it, should have, it would have been one of the few subjects I would still be using), humans are crap at reading uppercase letters.
Australia
Ha! So, I’m going to claim it’s not my fault I misread it, and I’m going to do a geekrant about it, because now it’s a geek issue – look, it’s got web on it. And the fun part is, a few months after the ad went up I noticed it, but just as soon as I blog about it they pull it down. So you’re just going to have to take my word for it – the ad was up there. There’s a beer ad now.

What’s with that logo in the bottom-right corner? How does that add to the ad’s message? Why isn’t the VirginBlue in a more prominant location? Why did they change colours midway through the web address, and what’s with that aeroplane tail – are they intentionally making this hard to read? Or perhaps they’re making the name look like a plane – so why haven’t they added wings? And what does “me-time” have to do with the smirking idiot on the left hand side?

If you join the mile-high club after doing a web chicken, is that kinky?

AU analogue TV to continue to 2010

Probably sensing outrage from the populace, most of whom have no wish to either throw out their existing TV, or buy one of those fiddly set-top boxes (which rarely fit on top of the telly anyway), the Australian federal government committee overseeing such things has had a change of heart, and postponed turning off analogue TV until 2010, instead of the previous planned 2008.

Digital transmissions now reach 95% of households, but only 12% use them. To try and encourage people onto digital, they’re looking at letting commercial networks multicast from 2007. That’s what should get the punters enthused, after all, for most people a clear stereo PAL signal is all they want — give them the option of extra channels (more than ABC-2, that is) and they might start to shell out for STBs in bigger numbers.

(It’s not a done deal yet — it’s up to the Communications Minister to actually act on the committee’s recommendations.)

.id.au rush on now

Well, if .id.au domains are free, why not grab yourself a .id.au domain? You can transfer it to another domain seller when the free six months are up. I guess they’re planning on you stumping up the $67.50 for the remaining 18 months when you’ve found it to be indispensable, rather than moving it somewhere else.

Now, how am I going to remember to move mine in five months?

Emergency 000 vs 112

If you’ve ever wondered what the difference between the Australian emergency number 000 and the European standard 112 is, check this Australian Communications Authority document.

In past years 112 had network priority and other advantages that 000 didn’t, including working without a SIM, and when the handset is keypad locked. This is no longer the case, as most handsets and SIMs now sold in Australia have a firmware modification to treat 000 just as well as 112. My own handset, a two-year-old Nokia 6100, will happily accept 112 or 000 even when keylocked. (No, I didn’t press the dial key when trying this.)

The stuff on page 10 reveals just how ignorant of emergency numbers some people are, despite 000 being “it” for decades. Mind you, I’m not sure why they don’t make moves to allow 112 from fixed line phones, for the benefit of overseas visitors.

Oh, there’s also 106 for Telephone Typewriter (TTY) users. So far there’s no SMS-capable emergency number. But it’s notable that an emergency call where the operator can’t hear the caller is diverted to a recorded service allowing the caller to press “55” to indicate an emergency if they can’t talk, allowing the call to be passed back to the operator or police, and CLI to be used to despatch a response. Good thinking, whoever thought that up.

This is God calling

Yesterday I answered the ‘phone. Because I was home, having a holiday, which is soon to be rudely interrupted by a short working stint, but that’s by-the-by. I could tell that whomever had called didn’t know anyone in the house; the phone’s listed in my girlfriends name. “Hello, Mr [Girlfriend’s-name]?” is a dead giveaway that they’ve pulled the number from the phonebook, and immediately puts me on the defensive. Which is why I have no interest in having the phone in my name. I can spot low-life scum a mile away with the arrangement as it is.

Now, the first thing I do when I have a telemarketer on the phone is to get them to tell me who they are. The lass weasled about, talking about a survey. Surveys don’t care about the identity of the respondent; this was marketting. Eventually she said she was representing the Jehovah’s Witnesses, at which point I terminated the call; religous fundamentalists get up my nostril.

Neither Cathy nor I get any telemarketing calls – oh, well maybe we get a couple a year from local gyms. It’s because we’re signed up to the ADMA’s do-no-call list. If you’re not signed up, stop reading, and go sign up now. The local gyms get the line “we only purchase goods from members of the Australian Direct Marketting Association” and they’re taken care of.

So, here we have technology being used for evil. Evil, not only because it’s evangelical fundamentalists at work, but because they claim they’re doing a survey about how people in the local neighbourhood feel about stuff. Because it’s a survey, that would be covered by the Australian Market & Social Research Society, which (they would claim to keep the statistics clean) doesn’t operate a do-not-call list (in spite of the fact that people that don’t want to be surveyed are going to do all sorts of bad things to their stats).

Worst of all, I don’t think there’s much I can do about it, except I remember hearing about a guy who had installed a PABX with and IVR – “if you want to talk to Cathy, press 1 now. To talk to Josh, press 2 now. Pressing 3 now will let you talk at Owen, but don’t expect a cogniscient conversation out of him.” Apparently, in the US, he was getting zero telemarketing calls – which is quite a feat.

Questions:

  1. Has the obesity epidemic reached the point where the Jehovah’s Witnesses can’t be bothered leaving the house to recruit souls so that they can, pyramid-sales-scheme-like, go to heaven?
  2. Why don’t the Jehovah’s Witnesses tell people up front you’re not going to heaven, even if you convert (there’s only 144,000 spots – what are the chances you’ll be goody-two-shoes-super-converter enough to get in)?
  3. Why doesn’t the AMSRS operate a do-not-call list?
  4. Why doesn’t the government ban harrassment like this?
  5. What can I do to stop this from happening again?

Sony joins iTunes AU

If you haven’t totally banned purchases from Sony due to the rootkits, you can at least now buy Sony BMG music tracks via the iTunes store; they’ve backed-down on refusing to have their artists available there.

Meanwhile Apple is under fire for including a “phone home” feature that’s turned on by default in the latest version of iTunes (the Mac version only so far?).

Update Friday 7am: EFF: Apple backs down on the “phone home” feature.

Online trip planners

Outlook now has links to MSN Mappoint, providing driving directions. Though I never drive in or out of central Melbourne unless I absolutely have to, I decided to see if it and a competitor, Multimap.com, could plot me a path home.

The main problems with these types of map sites is

  • the data is inadequate (often a problem with international companies trying to cover lots of cities), or
  • the mapping software decides you should do something wacky (which I’ll admit, is often down to the data again, though sometimes it seems to be the algorithms used)

Mappoint wanted to know which of two identical “247 Flinders Lane” addresses I wanted to use. I tried both, and both gave the wrong position along Flinders Lane. (Not bad, but a search for an address on Collins Street gave me 8 to choose from.)

Mappoint question

Mappoint also told me to drive down Kingsway/Queens Road, then do a right hand turn at St Kilda Road. Most Melbourne locals would know that you can’t do a right hand turn there. Like, physically, you can’t. Queens Road passes under St Kilda Road. If you want to do a right hand turn, you have to do a left a bit earlier and go via Union Street.

Mappoint directions

Multimap found the right spot in Flinders Lane. It then suggested I go left into Elizabeth Street (okay), left into Flinders (okay), then right into St Kilda Road — wrong! No right turn allowed there.

Rather than send me straight down St Kilda Road, it had me take a right via Albert Road to Queens Road, then left via Union Street back onto St Kilda Road. Pointless and confusing.

But it gets better. Rather than drive straight down St Kilda Road/Brighton Road/Nepean Highway, it got me to do a quick diversion around some of the side streets of Elsternwick, before turning back onto the highway. WTF?!

And according to Street-Directory, one of those side streets is actually blocked off to through-traffic. Pure genius!

Multimap directions

Lest you give up and decide to catch public transport, rest assured, the Connex trip planner is no better. Instead of telling me to walk half a block to Flinders Street station, it instead got me to unnecessarily wait for a tram to go three blocks to Flagstaff station.

In the past it’s provided even more stupid directions, suggesting you catch a tram in the wrong direction, then another back again, or needlessly change trains.

(PT umbrella organisation Metlink is working on a better planner, and are considering feeding their data into the new Google PT planner, too.)

It seems no matter which way you’re travelling, it doesn’t pay to trust the online trip planners just yet.

How AT&T lost a customer

From guest blogger Phil, in Australia

Yesterday I had to phone AT&T up in order to try to purchase a product they sell.

The product in question was called Web Meeting and it met our requirements nicely and a couple of calls by someone else hadn’t yielded any of the promised callbacks.

So I called the Australian number for AT&T and spoke to the receptionist I explained that I wanted to purchase Web Meeting and needed to speak to someone who could help me purchas it, she then put me through to the Helpdesk in the Philippines.

I called back and again spoke to the receptionist and asked for someone in Sales. “they are all in a sales meeting today” but I’ll try connecting for you. She then disconnected me.

I called back, explained again and she tried putting me through to the same person but disconnects me again.

At this point I’m pretty annoyed but ring back up and am successfully transfered to a sales executive who takes some details and promises to call back, but doesn’t give me his number so i can call him direct. Three hours later he still hasn’t called back. Call AT&T and told he’s in a meeting.

I’m now so annoyed I look up their address detailed on the AT&T website and lo and behold they are in the building opposite the one I’m in, and two floors down. So i decide to walk over there and try to resolve this.

I walk over get to reception and meet my first nemesis, the receptionist. She’s brusque and annoyed that I don’t have an appointment but when I give my name she is immediately apologetic about the disconnections and calls the sales executive again but he is still in a meeting, so I ask to speak to someone else.

Cue a nice young lady from Kilkenny in Ireland who recently returned from the Grand Canyon in the US where she was on holiday. Suffice to say in 5 minutes I’ve explained what I need and why I’m there.

She promises to call me or email me later in the day with the details i need but says that our company may not meet the mininum requirements for the product. She explains that in order to qualify to BECOME an AT&T customer we would need to have an existing contract with them worth at least $100,000AUD.

Flabbergasted I leave with her promise to contact me and concentrate on other things.

Fast Forward to the next morning.

I receive an email from her telling me that the US alone controls Web Meeting and all administration and sign up is handled there, she emailed the product manager and will get back to me when they reply to her email.

So I think well its still afternoon in the US so i’ll ring them and find out what i need to do to sign up. Cue Benny Hill-esque telephone calling sequence where i try every number for AT&T in the US only to discover they’ve all gone home at 4pm EDT!

Eventually I get answered (call centre in Georgia) and speak to someone who can sign me up there and then, i explain i’m calling from australia and need to buy Web Meeting and can we do it now.

I spend the next 30 minutes providing all the details their system needs, addresses, billing addresses, telephone numbers and contact details. And then she asks me for a US telephone number for billing purposes, I explain we don’t have a US office and can I pay by credit card.

In order for us to be billed, and thus signed up, we need a US phone number. When I say we don’t have one she says she can’t continue without it, and there is nothing we can do to get around it.

What kind of company advertises a global product but has the requirement that you must have a US phone number in order to be billed?!

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We went and bought a year’s subscription to www.beamyourscreen.com and so far it’s working just as we want, no fuss and no sign up hassles.