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Fairfax Tech Column 102

It was the early eighties. The corner store at Boundary Road a few blocks from where I lived had Pinball machines – which I wasn’t very good at! We used to watch and marvel at the kids from other schools who were always winning free games…
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Fairfax Tech Column 101

It was back in 2013 that ‘selfie’ was named the 2013 word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. The first use of the term was credited to an Aussie who was describing a photograph he took of himself after falling over drunk after a twenty f…
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Fairfax Tech Column 100

As a true blue Aussie, I am very proud to be doing something today that our cricketers have struggled to do recently. Chalk up a century. Today marks a century of columns in my current series for Fairfax. For my one hundredth column, I thought of loo…
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Fairfax Tech Column 99

Buskers. School canteens. Tips. Coffees. These are the reasons people often give me to support the argument that we will never be a cashless society. I accept the fact that it may well be a long time before we are cashless but never is a very long ti…
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Fairfax Tech Column 98

State of Origin time again and what a fascinating contest in Melbourne on Wednesday night. Not fascinating because NSW actually won a game but fascinating for the technology inherent in the modern broadcast. Since 2014 we have seen the NFL (National …
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Fairfax Tech Column 97

The alarm goes off. The hand reaches for the button to stop the noise before bounding out of bed to engage in some gaming before the reality of the real-world sets in. Breakfast, chores and the trip to school. Sounds like a typical morning for a teen…
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Fairfax Tech Column 96

It was way back in April 2009 that I had finished talking at a seminar in Copenhagen and was due to fly out to my next stop in Amsterdam but I took a slight detour. While at the conference I was told by a local about a fascinating piece of infrastruc…
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Fairfax Tech Column 95

Despite the variety of NBN access methods I have previously written about in this column (FTTP; FTTN; FTTB; FTTC; FW; HFC…you get the picture) and the relative merits of the different technologies, all of these are significantly better than th…
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Fairfax Tech Column 94

Well another federal budget announcement has come and gone and pundits are still poring over the papers to see what devils lurk in the detail for different groups and sectors. From a pure technology perspective, there wasn’t a lot to get overly…
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Fairfax Tech Column 93

On the day affectionately known across the geek world as Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you) I thought about the seemingly never-ending series of movies we have seen so far – and continue to see – and how that same concept often appli…
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Fairfax Tech Column 92

Everyone using a mobile phone in our country – which means practically everyone – has some gold bling they aren’t necessarily aware of. The mobile phone system we use in Australia is know as GSM (originally standing for Groupe Sp&ea…
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Fairfax Tech Column 91

With the mention of military drones, the first image that comes to my mind is that of Helen Mirren starring as Colonel Katherine Powell, a UK military intelligence officer, in the 2015 British thriller film, Eye in the Sky. This movie focused on the …
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Fairfax Tech Column 90

When I read ‘The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club’ I should have taken more notice of the words of Charles Dickens. As far back as 1837, Dickens had one of his characters use the expression “Never say never.” Since the f…
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Fairfax Tech Column 89

This week saw another major tech launch on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) when a Swiss flag flew to mark the launch of a Swedish company (whoops)! At the end of trade, Spotify had a market capitalisation of almost US$30 billion. Not bad for a com…
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Fairfax Tech Column 88

Eighteen years ago, our country introduced the Goods and Services Tax (GST) that, despite a few minor complications with certain exemptions, is relatively simple. When a supplier sells a product, the supplier needs to add ten per cent to the cost of …
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Fairfax Tech Column 87

It is one of life’s great ironies. A person with a certain trait will unwittingly look for – or see – that trait in other people before any other trait. For example, take the situation when you don’t know where your phone is. …
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Fairfax Tech Column 86

If you think about the biggest single sales day on the mobile phone calendar you might think about Christmas Eve or 30 June or maybe even the beginning of the school year. What about Valentine’s Day? All incorrect. Undoubtedly the biggest singl…
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Fairfax Tech Column 85

The internal combustion engine has some history. Patents can be traced back as far as 1791 and various improvements were made through the 1800s. In 1826 a patent was issued for an engine that included a carburettor. In 1856 a 5HP engine replaced stea…
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Fairfax Tech Column 84

Breaking news. 4G is being rolled out on a barren sparse landscape to allow HD video to be uploaded. Sounds like a scenario that would make many people in regional Australia very happy. And as much as it would be fantastic to be reporting on that sit…
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