Adventure Ausrama Blog

Technology: Google must pay Optus to get ads on its network. Optus in Australia is planning to block ads on its network. This is a blow to companies like Google who are trying to bring down the system by banning ad blockers from its app store. Google's actions will not change anything. Many browsers are making ad blockers a built-in feature. If companies want to advertise they will have to send a popup to users to turn off their blockers to view the site. Of course, users will move on to another site. Don't be fooled though by carriers blocking ads. They will take money from adverrisers to let ads through, only to be blocked by individual users' local blockers. Power! Telcos do not have that much power. The market will not turn back now. Carriers do have power over Facebook, Google, and news organizations. They will have fork out "blackmail" money to telcos who will say no pay now show . Companies like Shine in Israel are in a new market. Shine been...

It amazes me how people can blatantly lie, and continue to lie, when everyone else knows the truth. There is a Senate inquiry in Australia into big companies, mainly tech giants, avoiding tax that is owed to this country. Mr King, the head of Apple Australia strongly denies that the company is reducing its tax payments through questionable methods. Fair "crack in the door mate" we all know what is really going on. Is Ireland involved in these methods? Apple and Google are the major companies targeted by the inquiry. Britain is planning to regulate to make them pay what is due there. Other countries are watching to see what Britain does. Of course, the easiest way to get money out of the tech megaliths is to introduce a revenue tax irrespective of profit, because it is profit that is being skimmed off subsidiaries by head office for non-existent services. The Australian Tax Office wants its pound of flesh from internationals as it does from locals. Last year Apple p...

Since the email was "invented" in 1977 it has continued as the main means of sending information that is admissible in court. Though you may think that what you say is not important, the content can be used against you in a court of law.  For light social exchange people use Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter. If governments could get their hands on the data it would use that against you as well. The main problem with email is that there is so much of it. The vast majority of users cannot deal with it. Most emails are discarded without being read simply because users think it is spam, or the nearest thing to it - continuing emails from a company you have either purchased something from or downloaded supposedly for free. New email systems from Google, Amazon, IBM or WorkMail usually just provide more folders that you could create yourself. The boundary between work and home life is now blurred with a mass of emails that need ongoing, endless attention. Tryin...

Australians are like people everywhere. They want change but they fear it. Advancement in technology appears to make our lives easier, but in a way life is becoming more complex. People make themselves known to millions of others. They fear that in the long run they will regret it. As they grow older what they did in their carefree youth will come back to haunt them. Only half of people feel secure about the technological future. One would expect that this would be higher. Young people in particular seem to welcome new gadgets with open arms. Nearly half of the population believe robotization will make their lives worse. Many use wearable gadgetry to help with their exercise and fitness. However, these could turn out to be just faddish endeavours like all the new exercise machines advertised on TV. The giant technological companies are experimenting with weird ideas. They have run out of rational concepts. These have been used up. Reviewers condemn the new tech offerings...

Microsoft is unhappy about a country that does not like government data stored overseas. It is jumping up and down about this policy in Australia. The question that must be asked is - Why is the big data giant so miffed about it? The loss in income for Microsoft cannot be that great. There must be another reason. Like Google, is Microsoft collecting data to use for its own ends? It is so upset it refuses to launch the Office 365 service in Australia. Microsoft is aggressively lobbying the Coalition government to change the rules and open up the market. It must be after something more than profit. Everything put into the cloud can be accessed by the cloud's owner. These services already hold data from many countries. If say a major government could get its hands on such data think of the power they would have. It seems only reasonable that countries should consider national security to be more important than reducing costs. Internet by Ty Buchanan http://www...

The NSA has said that it targeted non-US citizens in its information grab from large Internet companies. Australian and American government agencies have secured detailed data about Australian citizens. This fact came out in a new report. In the first half of 2013 546 requests were made on Australians. Facebook provided details on 349 of these. The US demanded information on 20,000 users assumed to be Americans. Access was granted on nearly 16,000 US accounts. Which government agencies made the demands was not announced by Facebook. Internet companies seem to have been given some sort of filtering power to decide what is released. This is strange considering such companies are not elected non-government agencies. Are they entitled to be above the law? Requests to Twitter by Australia have risen 600 percent since the second half of 2012. All members of the international data oligopoly were approached. About two thirds of all requests were successful. There is a fine balanc...

The Internet has disrupted the security of ordinary money. The economic system controlled by the banks for centuries is now under threat. Bitcoin is an example of new money. Its mere presence in feared by the banks. Money, or at least its value, depends on people having faith that it can easily be exchanged for different goods. In Germany before WWII security in money was severely challenged. There was rampant inflation, so much so that people had to push barrow loads of  cash to a shop to get a loaf of bread. New money is everywhere: PayPal has taken the banking world by storm. These bank-like services are being offered by Google, Apple and eBay. To get Followers on Twitter, many sites are offering seeds. Though the websites deny trading for followers, this is exactly what it is. Google's Wallet is really a bank service. Smartphones can be swiped in store terminals to buy goods. The problem is most money does not really exist it is just recorded in books as they used...

Google won a court case in Australia stopping others from using words similar to their trade name, for examples, boogle and doogle, etc. It seems Google is still intent on ruling the world over use of language. It is interfering with Sweden's intention to put a word in dictionaries. The Swedish version of the word "ungoogleable" is "ogooglebar" and is widely used. Google says it should not be in a dictionary as it is because part of the word "google" is a registered trade name. This is silly consider the word "hoovering"is in the Pocket Oxford dictionary. How much more power does Google want? It already has too much influence on societies. Google is not complaining about the word's inclusion. It wants a reference to Google being a trade name added to the definition. Sweden decided to leave the word out altogether. Google wants the word "Google" with a capital "G" shown , apparently to gain free adverti...

There isn't much doubt that mobile devices will soon outnumber the fixed PC. It is surprising that it has taken so long. People are tripping over each other to make pre-orders on the iPhone. There will probably be a rush for Microsoft's new offerings. In recent years Google's Android products have been racing forward, generally at the expense of Microsoft, not Apple. Web developers are slowly making a change as well. Old "easy" website building is a thing of the past. It seems websites have to provide a "traditional" PC type website and have another built-in for mobile devices. There must be an automatic link in the main website so that only the smaller site is sent to mobiles. Though many users have said they prefer looking at traditional sites with a small handheld, even though it means moving around a page to see all the info, download times are just too long for this to continue. HTML5 was envisaged to make it easier for developers, standard...

Google Gmail offers a new Internet phone service if you have a Gmail Account. There is one thing about running such a service on the Internet; that is it costs nothing for the company providing the service to run. Users pay a local telephone company for access to the Internet from their homes and on their mobile phones. The connection goes through each country via local telephone companies servicing the internet and phone lines. There is no charge for US Gmail users and a charge per call for those living in other countries. Though it is a small amount it is discriminatory. The Internet goes all around the world like a net. Access to this net is open to anyone. No country charges its population to access the net to other countries . The European furniture company Ikea has already been accused of cross-subsidization for charging different prices for the same products in different countries. The production and even distribution costs are much the same. Google's discriminatio...

Bare circles of earth ringed with tall grass are found all over Africa. They have been a mystery with all kinds of stories told about them. Now a partial explanation has been found. Walter Tschinkel has been studying the phenomenon since 2005. At first he thought they were caused by termites which poisoned and killed off the grass. He realized his mistake when he analyzed satellite images - the circles were alive! The circles would disappear then appear somewhere else. However, for the most part circles remain in one place for up to 75 years. The average life was 41 years. Rain tends to be the main factor leading to formation of a new circle. Tschinkel has not discovered the real cause. If fertile earth is put inside a circle grass still will not grow. Something is going on in a chemical or "living" sense. Locals do not want the mystery solved. They make a living out of them. For a fee tourists "adopt" a circle, then keep up-to-date by viewing it on Go...

Dangle, Dingle, Dongle. They are all out according to the Great God Google. It has taken a business "minnow" offering alcohol price comparisons to court and beaten it to death, well into submission, until it agreed not to use the name "Groggle". This means that Google owns by default all new business names that contain "gle". The result of this courtroom debacle is disgraceful. There should be some way where the little man has the resources to fight a giant like Google. The little business cowered in the corner and quietly murmured " Drinkle! That is what we will call our service ." Only then would Google put the big stick down. What is the world coming to when there is no protection from economic monsters like Google. Though this business wasn't even in the same industry as Google, financial muscle won the day. He had to make an out of court agreement of SILENCE! The owner of the business said he couldn't afford to go on with the court c...