Firstly, anyone that votes only on one policy is nuts… there are a lot of things that makes Australia what it is… voting on one tiny aspect of a whole of government approach is just weird IMHO.

Now I am on the record as saying that I think the whole Net Filter is a big joke… (a bad one), but a joke. It won’t do one thing to stop what the government claims it is for. How often do you see when places are raided, collections of DVD burners. These DVD’s are distributed by hand or by post, not by the internet. But I digress…

From IT News

Ludlam, who has long opposed mandatory filtering, said the Liberals were likely to support Labor’s filtering proposal under Tony Abbott’s leadership.

“I think the Liberals are ducking and weaving; I think internally, they’re split … but the fact is, the party is led by Tony Abbott who is deeply conservative,” he said.

Never have truer words been said.  If you don’t think that a government lead by someone on the record by such a Conservative as Tony Abbott would not leap at an opportunity such as this (even if only partially technically feasible) you are in the words from The Castle ‘Dreaming Mate’.

These are just the low res versions, watch on youtube or choose HD for the better views…

Great Ocean Road – Geelong to Apollo Bay (Dur 3:45)

Detailed Blog Post

Warrnambool to Kingston SE (Dur 4:38)

Detailed Blog Post

Kingston SE to Adelaide (Dur 4:11)

Detailed Blog Post

Old Coorong Road (Dur 2:25) (This is a subset of the above video)

Detailed Blog Post

Adelaide to Melbourne (Dur 7:02)

Detailed Blog Post

(this is HD Video… best watched full screen, or just choose the 480 version from the video controls )

The Route: 350km Approx

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(this is HD Video… best watched full screen, or just choose the 480 version from the video controls )

The Route – Approx: 416 km

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The Route
41.3 km – about 1 hour 39 mins

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Note to self: Never do the Great Ocean Road on the weekend or in Summer, people are idiots and drive slowly and never use turn outbays ever.

(this is HD Video… best watched full screen, or just choose the 480 version from the video controls )

The Route:

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Video from a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000, attached to an Asus R2H and a Seagate 880 USB HD. Video captured at 5fps 720p quality. Then speed up in Windows Live Movie Maker Beta.

(this is HD Video… best watched full screen, or just choose the 480 version from the video controls )

The Route

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As I am on Vodafone sim on my HTC-Desire (more outback trips I use a Telstra Sim), there are a few black spots along the coast I will be dropping back to Edge network as well… so I have no idea how well it work.

(p.s sorry about the frame as well, but all going well this should work)

(p.p.s sorry in advance for the fact that I will forget to turn on the software at some point in time )

Also you can stalk me in the usual ways via Twitter or Foursquare as well.

Firstly I think the people with this attitude are bit full of themselves.  Why, because a lot of apps on both Symbian and Iphone are just templates and are well crap.  They are the ones that have low ratings, but make up the numbers.  The numbers is what people trot out when talking about how cool their ecosystem is.  I’m a big fan of quality of quantity myself.  Not that I am saying that Android has the quality, not yet.  I am frustrated that a lot of apps that are on Itunes are just hollow shells on the Android platform.

I can however see two major uses for it. The first is I can custom make quick apps to do something only I need.  It doesn’t have to look pretty, it doesn’t need a good UX, it just needs to be quick and dirty and work.  So I am sure my phone will fill up with these kind of apps, just for me and knocked out in 5 min.

The bigger one though is prototyping, and rapid prototyping.  This tool will give not just high end programmers the ability to make an app, but a much wider community.  How often have to encountered people in your own organisation with a great idea who can’t get it up because they can’t even show you a wireframe of their idea.  Many of the projects I have done over the years have started life as a series of boxes on a screen, boxes that pull in, mash up and output content.  Of course the best ideas still need graphic design, UX, UI etc.  Those that have that ability or access to those skills will take their projects from the mundane to the extraordinary.  But now Android has a tool that can be used inside a business to show what can be done.  Selling a concept to your manager via a wireframe PDF or an interactive document are very different propositions.  The ability to interact gives feedback to the user, even in prototype stage.

The faster you can make a prototype the faster you can see if a project is even going to work.  A rapid prototyping tool can save weeks of development when you can quickly find the issues in software, issues that could make or break the complete development cycle.

The most bizarre thing about the google post about the software is that they don’t even mention this functionality on the main page.

(Update)

Thinking about this some more…  Google have just opened up a dev environment to the Lego Mindstorm kids… and lots of other kids as well. Forget shelling out $100 to Apple, Google is free.  When you are 16 and living on pocket money $100 is a lot! This really is a big game changer. Kids (and adults) will be able to make an App just for themselves or their close social network and distribute that app to them.  Millions of these apps will be created and the vast majority of them will never see the light of day on the App Store.  Why because you don’t need the App store to distribute them just a USB cable.  In many respects the breaking down of the App store may well be the liberation that the platform needs to break into the mass market.

Further to my first point, granularity is said to be king in this modern internet world.  When people can make an App for 1 or 2 people, then granularity has traction.  Drag and drop for interface functions means ease of build, which opens up these micro markets.  Micromarkets means developers working on your platform and not the oppositions. All this leads to market share (over the long term).  Google are a long term player and this when compared to Apple shutting down “Flash Developers”, shows where Google are heading.

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I for one am really looking forward to this new tool from Google.

Here is the video…

Perhaps if both sides of politics took the time to read the facts http://aph.gov.au/library/pubs/BN/sp/AsylumFacts.htm and stopped going for the lowest common denominator,  this would not be an issue.

Instead we play gutter politics with the most vulnerable, when what we should be doing is educating people.  Yet the problem seems to be that educating takes longer and doesn’t fit the soundbite