Shocking news - nicely displayed

Animated Christchurch Quake Map

And you think YOUR sysadmin is a control freak.

Ex-San Francisco network admin gets four-year sentence

Childs defended his actions during a long court trial, saying that he was only doing his job, and that his supervisor, Department of Technology and Information Services chief operations officer Richard Robinson, was unqualified to have access to the passwords. Childs eventually handed over the passwords to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Because the mayor is more technically qualified???

Prosecutors characterised the former network administrator as a power hungry control freak who couldn't be managed.

You think?

Childs may also have to cover the city's US$900,000 bill, spent on trying to regain control of its network.

One wonders at the policy of allowing one employee to power to 'own' an entire network. Does San Francisco lack a bus service? (as in what if they were run over by a bus)
Either way, this super-ego is better off not controlling something do important.

Google search - No region

My machine (in NZ) is connected via proxy in Australia or on occaison in the UK.
By default going to google.com will redirect (based on my current proxy) to the regional sites google.com.au or google.com.uk. by using the following URL I am redirected to google.com without redirection.

www.google.com/ncr

NCR = no country redirect

I discovered this here

When the IE8 Developer Toolbar get confused while docked...

Discovering Internet Explorer Developer Tools

Getting Started

Getting started with the tools is simple: press F12 or click Developer Tools from the Tools menu.

Once open, the tools exist in their own window, each one connected to a single tab in Internet Explorer. If you prefer to decrease the number of open windows, pin the tools to a tab by clicking the Pin button or pressing CTRL+P.

Some features of the tools do not need the complete tools interface. In that case, click the Minimize button or press CTRL+M when the tools are pinned. The tools become a row at the bottom of the window, providing access to just theCommand Menu bar.

This could be good or catastrophic

(Emphasis Mine)
Microsoft patents anatomically correct avatars: "Accurate avatars will facilitate online honesty"

"The new systems include provisions for sensing physical data (via pedometers, cameras, or health information repositories like Microsoft HealthVault) psychological characteristics (including levels of alertness or mood changes) and even demographic information like "education level, geographic location, age, sex, intelligence quotient, socioeconomic class, occupation, marital/relationship status, religious belief, political affiliation, etc."

"Physical data that reflect a degree of health of the real person can be linked to rewards of capabilities of a gaming avatar, an amount of time budgeted to play, or a visible indication," reads the summary. "Thereby, people are encouraged to exercise."

I think I am scared by the implications of this - only time will tell.
I can see evil lurking. Can You?

An amazing way to look at world stats - nice UX

GapMinder

All those little apps

Ninite Easy PC Setup and Multiple App Installer

The easiest way to get apps

ViewState 101

TRULY Understanding ViewState - Infinities Loop

ViewState is a very misunderstood animal. I would like to help put an end to the madness by attempting to explain exactly how the ViewState mechanism works, from beginning to end, and from many different use cases, such as declared controls vs. dynamic controls.

Open Government and Local body data

Open Data Catalogue

Opengovt.org.nz is an open, independent catalogue of Government and Local Body datasets

Looking to download the latest list of Primary Schools? Want to find out the average market rents for Dunedin suburbs and use these in a report? Are you interested in the boundaries of your suburb? If the answer is yes then you may find some of this information hard to come by. Even though this information should be easy to obtain it is sometimes hard to find who to talk to, where to look and worse hidden behind pay-walls and restrictive license agreements. The Open Data Catalogue is an attempt to classify where this information resides, who ‘owns’ it, what license it is distributed under and if it is free or not.

Including SPATIAL datasets

New to computing? Have a friend/parent wanting to become digital? - try this!

Digital Literacy Curriculum Original Version XP/Office 2003

Digital Literacy Curriculum II Vista/Office 2007

VPC Images for testing IE6, 7, 8

Download details: IE App Compat VHD:

What was XTRA thinking

Yesterday I posted an article about the Google streetview technology.
I saw it last year and took a virtual tour of Brooklyn NY. Brilliant.
I never dreamed that NZ would be in the first 10 countries to get this. Well done Google.

So when XTRA, the number one ISP in NZ (by volume) looked for a partner to offload their e-mail capability they selected Yahoo.
I assume this 'partnership' was because of the care and concern Yahoo has for our country.
just look at the stunning level of detail in the auckland Yahoo map

Pitiful.

Yahoo mail is hostile, the data is stored off shore and XTRA is still crashing more often then a drunk university student in Palmerston north.

Can anyone recommend an ISP that is affordable and still works for their money?

Walk on by...

Map here

I will wave at you from my desk :D

10K

10,000 visitors since August 2004

OK, so I am not TradeMe!
OK, so 97% will be bots and RSS readers.
STILL 10,000 hits.
I would like to thank both of my readers (Cheers mum!)

The problem with time travel.

Wikihistory: "International Association of Time Travelers"

More Cheat Sheets

Cheat Sheets - ILoveJackDaniels.com

HTML / SQL Server / CSS and many more

.NET Cheat Sheets

.NET Cheat Sheets « Just Sayin’ More Words

UserVoice

UserVoice: "Harness the Wisdom of your crowd"

It's not you, it's me.

Down for everyone or just me?

Simple, elegant, brilliant.

IT truths

Computerworld:

Seven years later, IT truths still hold Frank Hayes' 2000 column still relevant today