ick

it’s the time of year here when everyone is passing around colds. and i’m battling one. haven’t been v up to date with checking emails.

september/october

btw, i’m looking at a trip home in the sept/oct time frame. haven’t booked yet but there’s a sale on (which sucks compared to the prices to come to AU) and i might be booking in the next week or so. just keep that in mind if you’re thinking about trips anywhere….

it’s a new e-book

sony has a new e-book. ahhh, these things make me nostalgic for 1998 ish when i worked with 2 separate readers (rocketebook & softbook). while i initially turned my nose up at both, after using them a little bit, i could see the possibilities.

as the person in this review / post says: it’s perfect for PDFs. It’s also perfect for students so they can load up all their books (you can highlight and take notes on the old ones. not sure about this new sony one). i could have saved a lot of trees & toner during my mba.

has anyone seen these at borders? sounds light with great battery. the ‘feel’ was always something a bit odd. at first it was one of the things i turned my nose up at (softbook was huge & both were fairly heavy) but i really liked rocketebook’s feel after a little while.

had more titles been available back then, i might have bought the hardware. sony seems to be in the same situation of pushing people to their own bookstore… somehow i think that might kill it again. (and i haven’t even bothered to look of the book format is proprietary. just assuming it’s something i wouldn’t be able to read on the computer, print and on the ebook). but it is sort of cute.

book ur au trip NOW!!!!

the sale expires on May 31st so book now – qantas has a nice sale with $888 rt SF-sydney. sf-melb is $1034. miami (hello out there) to melb is $1394.

u have to start ur travel before june 3rd or btwn aug 2-31.

they also have deals with their aussie pass which gives u rt from la or san fran plus 3 domestic au flights. for example, come over in june or july stop in brisvegas, sydney & melbourne for $1499. that’s 4 flights which is like $375 per flight.

i’m trying to find cheap deals now to spend a wknd in brissy and a trip home and i’m being quoted $500 for brissy & $1700 or more to the states so that’s a great deal.

back up!

it looks like the site & email & such are all online

i’ll be unreachable on sunday

or rather my email & websites will be unreachable b/c my hosting company is moving. you might as well just queue up the mail & not send it til later sunday nite (for those of u in the states). below is the start time, they’re estimating 5 hours but we all know how that goes…

Sunday midnite PST (ie San Fran)
Sunday 3am EST (ie NYC)
Sunday 8a BST (it is bst now, isn’t it London-ers?)
Sunday 5pm AEST (australian eastern ie Melbourne)

of course i can update my twitter page while the site is down.

pick up the pace!

there’s been a study showing people in some cities are walking 10% faster than they were 10 years ago (another story here and main researcher here).

they watched people on the street & timed how long it took them to walk 60 feet. those in singapore walked the fastest at 10.55 seconds. nyc was 12 seconds (8th fastest). london 12.17 (12th fastest).

they surveyed 32 countries but not australia. wellington nz came in at 15 with 12.62 seconds. i was definitely annoyed by the slowness of people in wellington. i think they probably annoyed me just as much as people here do with their slow walking. maybe ill have to do some research of my own.

here’s the full list: (starting with fastest)
1) Singapore (Singapore); 10.55:
2) Copenhagen (Denmark); 10.82:
3) Madrid (Spain); 10.89:
4) Guangzhou (China): 10.94:
5) Dublin (Ireland); 11.03:
6) Curitiba (Brazil); 11.13:
7) Berlin (Germany); 11.16:
New York (United States of America); 12.00:
9) Utrecht (Netherlands); 12.04:
10) Vienna (Austria); 12.06:
11) Warsaw (Poland); 12.07:
12) London (United Kingdom); 12.17:
13) Zagreb (Croatia); 12.20:
14) Prague (Czech Republic); 12.35:
15) Wellington (New Zealand); 12.62:
16) Paris (France); 12.65:
17) Stockholm (Sweden); 12.75:
18) Ljubljana (Slovenia); 12.76:
19) Tokyo (Japan); 12.83:
20) Ottawa (Canada); 13.72:
21) Harare (Zimbabwe); 13.92:
22) Sofia (Bulgaria); 13.96:
23) Taipei (Taiwan): 14.00:
24) Cairo (Egypt); 14.18:
25) Sana’a (Yemen); 14.29:
26) Bucharest (Romania); 14.36:
27) Dubai (United Arab Emirates); 14.64:
28) Damascus (Syria); 14.94:
29) Amman (Jordan); 15.95:
30) Bern (Switzerland); 17.37:
31) Manama (Bahrain); 17.69:
32) Blantyre (Malawi); 31.60.

there’s no mention as to if they confirmed these people lived there or were tourists. tourists would have thrown off the numbers.

c’mon over & funny web2.0 thing

it seems google can’t find enough qualified australians for their operation over here. they especially want engineers (duh). so they’re having a g’day google day to entice americans to come over. there’s lots of gigs listed (and they’re not all tech) but they’re all in sydney (they have a small office in melb but i think it’s all account mgmt).

and for u designer people – get your very own web2.0 card

webby awards

according to an email i received the webby awards were awarded yesterday. funny how years ago i could have named the big awards & nominees & would have been voting for a place i worked at (both of which were nominated again…) while now i receive an email re: the winners. australia had 4 nominees/0 winners. they were the commonwealth bank for banking, the perth intl arts festival for events, and both sydney wildlife world & the tourism au website for tourism.

i just spent the last 2 hours trying to get the fax software to work on the computer, trying to take a clear enough pix of a document i needed to fax, having photoshop crash multiple times and then giving up & going out to the 24 hr kinkos where i paid $12.10 to do what i should have done in the first place. argh. computers.