Monday, September 21, 2009

Cycling & Walking Journey Planner is here

Just launched from the Greater Wellington Regional Council is the new Cycling & Walking Journey Planner. Built by the team at [business: ProjectX Technology] the Journey Planner provides optimised routes for both walking and cycling for the entire Wellington Region.
Unlike the walking routes provided on Google Maps, this Journey Planner also uses the many public accessways and shortcuts to provide more convenient routes to the user, plus gives the user the ability to click-n-drag their own alternative routes, as well as displaying the numerous points of interest in the area.
Launched to coincide with World Carfree Day, this site should hopefully become an asset to all Wellingtonians.
http://www.journeyplanner.org.nz
http://www.projectx.co.nz

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

NZCS Evening With Industry Tonight

Tonight I'll be doing a quick talk at the New Zealand Computer Society's Evening with Industry up at Victoria University. This event is designed to inform students who are about to graduate what to expect when trying to enter the IT workforce.
I'll be outlining my time spent with [business:ProjectX Technology] and [business:Made from New Zealand], as well as my time involved in the [business:Summer of Code].
There will also be speakers from Trade Me, BNZ, Intergen, Code to Customer, Provoke, Catalyst and KPMG.
More info can be found on the event's Facebook Page

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Grab Elston Gun's latest single free for a limited time


Just thought I'd let the people know that Elston Gun, one of Wellington's most awesome live bands, are for a limited time letting you download their latest single Chaperone for free as part of [business:Amplifier]'s Free Lunch campaign.
If you enjoy their sound be sure to also check out their debut EP 'White Noise' released on [business:Et Cetera Recordings].
You can also check out their sounds at http://www.myspace.com/elstongun

Friday, May 29, 2009

Utilising Facebook Chat (without needing to be on Facebook)


I get a lot of people hit me up saying "Dude, I see you online on Facebook all the time, do you ever do any work?", little do they know I'm actually using chat clients to plug in to Facebook Chat without actually needing to be on the site. A lot of people don't realize that they can use Facebook Chat just like MSN or Google Talk, so I thought I'd give a quick rundown of what's available.



Pidgin (Windows and Linux)

Pidgin is an Opensource chat client which can aggregate multiple chat systems into the one program, this means that you can use it plug in to MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo Chat, AIM, Bonjour and other popular chat systems all in the one program. Facebook chat will require a simple plugin to get it working, but once thats on there you can chat to all your friends on Facebook in a much better interface than what's available on the site.
You can download Pidgin from: www.pidgin.im
The Facebook plugin can be found here.



Adium (Mac OS X only)

Adium pretty much is just Pidgin, except it's build to utilize the goodness of Mac OS X, this means that you get cool things like Growl notifications, and icons jumping on the dock bar (you better envy that stuff Windows users). The sweet thing with Adium though is that it comes packaged with Facebook Chat, so you're all good to go once it's installed. In my opinion Adium has a much better interface than iChat and much easier to use.
Adium can be downloaded from: www.adium.im



Digsby (Windows only. Linux and Mac coming soon)

Digsby is designed to be a one-stop-shop for emails, chat and social networking. It can give you email alerts, use all the popular chat systems (including Facebook Chat) and also let you manage your Facebook and Twitter accounts, all from the one tool. In my opinion I found the interface very messy and difficult to work with, as well as an issue where the system would momentarily disconnect from the chat servers, which was a pain in the ass in the middle of a conversation. It also didn't provide adequate alerts when someone was trying to contact me on chat, so I had a few cases where people thought I was ignoring them.
Even though I wouldn't recommend it, digsby can be found here: www.digsby.com



Gabtastik (Windows and Mac OS X)

This is called a "Site Specific Browser" designed to let you have Facebook chat running in another window. This seems to be no different from clicking "pop-out chat" on Facebook, so there's really no point in downloading this, as it's kind of a waste of time.
If you do want to find out more you can visit: www.gabtastik.com

Conclusion
As I do work in three different Operating Systems (Ubuntu 9.04, Mac OS X Leopard and Windows XP), I find Adium on Mac, and Pidgin on Windows and Linux have the best user interface and the most reliable.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

We did it 'cos we could!

On the 21st of March a large majority of my day was spent down at Oriental Bay helping dig [business:Made from New Zealand]'s colossal 50 fern. This was awesome effort from which was only decided to be done a few days earlier by Made From director [person:Tim Norton].
Throughout the day we had many onlooker's curious about why exactly we were digging up Oriental Bay, "'cos we can!" seemed to be my common reply. This wasn't just some smart-alec reply either, nobody had any major problems with what we were doing, it was just an awesome group of kiwi's (not just New Zealanders), doing something out of the ordinary to promote the kiwi attitude.
The day turned out to be a huge success, with the fern was completed and filmed before Wellington's unpredictable weather took hold. There are plans in the pipeline for other ferns to be dug around the country, and I have to admit, it is an awesome thing to be a part of.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Widgets for Blogger - Almost Here!

Good news, [business:Made From New Zealand] blog syndication widgets are now in beta testing for Blogger blogs.
All that will be needed for the widgets is a small piece of javascript code placed at the bottom of each post, this will give the same functionality as the Wordpress.org plugin.
We'll be giving details on how to get it on your own blog soon through our blog network, so sign up if you aren't already to get amongst this powerful tool.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Blackout

Get amongst the cause.
http://creativefreedom.org.nz/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=50627039924

New Zealand's new Copyright Law presumes 'Guilt Upon Accusation' and will Cut Off Internet Connections without a trial. Join the black out protest against it!