Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa
Station of the Year
NZ Radio Awards 2009
10 February, 2010
Listen live or
listen again here
Technology links from Colin Jackson
Colin Jackson is an independent technology consultant and writer in Wellington, New Zealand. He has over twenty years' private and public sector experience as a technologist, covering IT policy, the Internet, IT strategy, project management and IT security.
Hear Colin after the 11am news every Thursday on Nine To Noon. You can also discuss the broadcasts on Colin's blog at it.gen.nz.
28 January 2010
Google in China: anatomy of a hack. US Government’s reaction.
The secret ACTA treaty that will curtail your rights – coming to a capital city near you. Calls for transparency from the European Parliament and from New Zealand.
Apple’s share price keeps going up.
Apple earnings are up 50%
The 'true story' of how Dr. King kept Uhura on Star Trek17 December 2009
Makerspace – a community of people who like to build stuff in Wellington
Telecom XT failure. Not the first time. And they need to fix iPhone tethering. Hmm.
Gary McKinnon – evil hacker or confused Asperger’s sufferer?
A mobile wifi point with Internet connectivity. Good idea.
New Copyright proposals from government and attendees at a briefing about the secret ACTA treaty are told it’s confidential. Who’s surprised?
26 November 2009
The Large Hadron Collider – finally. Yippee!
Ten things mobile phones have made, or will make, obsolete.
ACTA – the secret treaty that could take away your rights, but you aren’t allowed to see it. Michael Geist’s take on it, and a column by Colin Jackson.
29 October 2009
Geocities has shut down.
The Whitehouse uses free software, and the US Department of Defense says free software is good.
A disk crash. Don’t let one ruin your whole year, and backup regularly. Use a USB hard drive like this one. Backup software for Windows and Linux. For Mac users it’s built-in.
Photoshopped pictures imagining life if the Internet went away tomorrow (strong language warning).
15 October 2009
The Herald explains what went wrong at Air New Zealand and IBM’s role.
Twitter thwarts attempt to gag press
Vodafone to reduce network investment?
Next generation cell phone technology
1 October 2009
Alan Turing – Gordon Brown’s apology.
The Advanced Encryption Standard.
Download Python, and learn to use it straight away.
Python’s home page, and the wonderfully-named Boa Constructor.
The New Zealand Python Conference.
Running the Internet on carrier pigeons. Yes, really.
10 September 2009
A copyright black hole swallows our culture.
European Commissioners want to change copyright law.
How to turn 136 people into 7m – bad survey of illegal downloaders.
Telecom Cabinets – good or bad?
Government high-speed fibre plan…we’re waiting.
SR71 Blackbird – two more stories.
3 September 2009
Software freedom day in Wellington – September 20th, and Waikato’s event is at Wintec the day before.
Download Scratch – a great, free way for kids to learn programming. Windows or Mac.
Windows 7 versus Apple’s Snow Leopard, and the next release of Ubuntu.
Virtualbox - how to run lots of operating systems on one computer.
Making babies in space may not be easy.
27 August 2009
Farewell the London Planetarium. Let’s hope the Carter Observatory gets back in business soon.
Free Stellarium software for Windows, Mac and Linux.
The Square Kilometre Array – the planned new radio telescope
Yellow pages in your phone?
Cartoon: How to support your own computer.
20 August 2009
The Herald on the background to software patents, and the campaign against them.
Microsoft hoist by their own patented petard.
The SR71 Blackbird and how its engines work.
Wikipedia on Ramjets and Scramjets.
Hotol – a cross between a rocket and a plane.
Author Charles Stross and Economist Paul Krugman talk about the future – it’s a wild ride!
6 August 2009
The “War on Free” – Google sued for giving away Google Maps
The EC Commissioner on Telecoms and Digital Media says piracy isn’t the problem – failing business models are the problem.
The Companies Office – a great source of information.
A blog post I wrote about opening government information, and one on SSC’s development blog.
The UK’s Show us a Better Way project.
Computerworld on recycling government data.
The Open Government Data Barcamp and Hackfest.
Microsoft Word is 20 years old. Time for retirement?
23 July 2009
Wellington domain name registrar IWantMyName can get you domain names with Māori macrons in.
Life imitates art: Big Brother declares Orwell’s works to be un-books.
Some technology predictions that didn’t pan out.
Who would have thought that Microsoft would release free software? I don’t know whether to believe that it was only because they were forced to.
NZ Post will do its word processing and spreadsheeting on Google Apps.
Air New Zealand moves to Silverstripe for its web site.
25 June 2009
The American city that wanted job applicants’ Facebook passwords. Now it’s changed its mind.
Go and help review UK MPs’ expense documents – and a good article about it from Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University.
Twitter feed for @persiankiwi who posts live from Tehran – and all Twitter posts mentioning #iran.
Harrowing video of Iranian girl shot by security service – search YouTube for “Neda Soltan”.
The godfather of invisibility explains - a great blog entry by journalist Peter Nowak.
11 June 2009
Dude! Where’s my iPhone?
Two degrees of separation. Grand gesture, or yet another delay?
Why newspapers shouldn’t lock down Internet stories.
Time Magazine asks whether computer nerds can save journalism.
How to manage werewolves.
28 May 2009
The Telecom XT network – pricing and speed.
Lancaster – not a bomber, but yet another Google-powered telephone. Hope it gets here.
According to Sony, nothing good has come out of the Internet. Really?
Meet Irving John Good of Bletchley Park and 2001 A Space Odyssey. He invented the concept of technological singularity.
A paper by Vernor Vinge who named and popularized the singularity.
Ray Kurzweil, futurist, and his book The Singularity is Near.
Accelerando, a novel by Charles Stross about life in the singularity – available online
Computer nerds make better lovers. Is anyone surprised?
14 May 2009
A second offshore cable – reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.
New Telecom network launch put off after Vodafone court action. Is this free publicity or a PR disaster? One man’s take on the winners and the losers. And, according to NBR, Telecom knew about the interference in November last year.
New Zealand’s third mobile network is closer to launch.
Businesses don’t ‘get’ text – thank goodness.
Bonus web-only feature – the last hovercraft.
23 April 2009
Bohemian Rhapsody as you’ve never heard it before.
Defacing web sites by attacking the DNS.
2006 white paper on PC energy consumption, and another about home computers. Top ten ways to save energy if you have computers.
The Internet is estimated to use 5% of global energy. Hmmm.
How to engage power management in Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X
Landauer’s Principle and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Google patents the offshore data barge, and Microsoft is building it’s servers into shipping containers
Star Wars in ascii characters on a terminal. Enjoy!
16 April 2009
Rupert Murdoch calls Google thieves. Google says do you want us to link to you or not?
Funny marketing video with lots of sheep in the Brecon Beacons, Wales. Stuff’s take, and TV3’s blooper.
The twitter storm about Amazon’s problem with gay books, and its resolution.
Spelling problems – apostates are not apostles. English grammar – debunking Strunk and White.
The BBC on the impact of txtspeak on language. Using text speak in exams may be OK
2 April 2009
Web browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera
Notes and backup: Evernote, Dropbox
Mail: Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Hotmail,
Applications online: Google Apps and Microsoft Office live
Maps: Google Earth, Google Maps, Windows Live Maps, and for the stars: Stellarium, Celestia
Skype for free calls and inkstand messaging, also Microsoft’s and Google’s equivalents
Security software: AVG free edition. HijackThis for advanced security users trying to diagnose problems.
Play audio and video: VLC
Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, and Twitter clients Twitterrific, Tweetdeck
Air New Zealand’s superb mobile phone software - mPass
Doodle – meeting scheduling – if you have people around the world, check Time and Date
VirtualBox – for running several operating systems simultaneously.
Published materials – TV, NZ Onscreen, Radio
Books – TOR science fiction, Bantam DoubleDay Dell has some free stuff as well, so does O’Reilly technical publishers.
Tripit – trip planner, puts together an itinerary from all your tickets and bookings.
Swivel.com – stats and charts form your own data. See also Geocommons.com
Gapminder.org for analyzing statistics about world population, health, wealth etc.
19 March 2009
Mobes on the Tube? Not going to happen.
How to tell if your machine is infected. If you are worried, scan your PC.
How to reinstall Windows XP or Vista.
Windows security software – a ‘must have’ if you run Windows. This mostly costs money, but there is a free but basic suite.
French Police save millions by switching to Linux.
German Foreign Ministry goes to Linux – ‘it’s far cheaper to maintain’.
26 February 2008
S92a of Copyright Act delayed - John Key and Simon Power on why.
Criticism of Facebook’s new terms of service, and then the back-down.
10 Privacy settings Facebook users should know.
Bletchley Park, home of the British WWII code-breakers.
The National Museum of Computing, home to a reconstructed Colossus computer.
19 February 2009
Webstock – New Zealand’s conference for anything to do with the Web.
Whimsical piece by author Neal Stephenson about an imagined fight with Bruce Sterling.
Peter Dunne says repeal this bad law.
A lot of press cover of the issue.
The last government ignored official advice to get rid of s92A.
Go down to Parliament and tell them what you think – Thursday, 12:00
5 February 2009
Apple’s first release, then second release about Steve’s Jobs’s health, and then he steps aside.
A review of Windows 7, and some people who think it should be a free upgrade. No, really.
Nokia gets to write its own law on employee privacy.
UK decides not to introduce unjust guilt by accusation law; New Zealand government presses on regardless.
The Creative Freedom Foundation.
Facebook as a polling instrument.
Wacky web headline of the week: Immortal Dr Who jellyfish poised to rule Earth
11 December 2008
The comb-over patented!
The Gender Analyzer. A good thing we don’t have to rely on it.
Star Trek communicator, and a USB Missile Launcher.
A USB record deck for converting all that old vinyl to digital.
House plants using Twitter to call for water.
Getting the latest Google phone, or just the plain old iPhone
Catcam and how you can make your own.
Hacking your Canon point-and-shoot camera.
Some cheap laptops, and some expensive ones.
4 December 2008
Altspace – co-working in Wellington
Consumer’s ISP survey – Telecom Xtra is the worst, Inspire is the best.
Telecom Xtra fails again. Who’s surprised?
Don’t put up with bad service – change your ISP.
29 November 2008
Someone left his mobile phone at a fast food joint. It held nude pictures of his wife. Oops.
McDonalds patents the sandwich.
Wikipedia on the Land Speed Record.
The website of the 1998 record breaker, ThrustSSC, and of the 2011 hopeful, BloodhoundSSC, and a BBC article about it all.
20 November 2008
Second Life cheating ends real marriage.
Preliminary reports about the cause of the Qantas jet plunge over Western Australia.
Air New Zealand on its electronic boarding passes, and a technology blogger’s take on it. Read the comments if you are interested in how the technology works.
13 November 2008
According to The Register, bloggers are getting bigger and messier.
A service to measure web page size.
Consumer’s survey of ISPs, and the ISP with the best service. Don’t be the last person on Xtra, try it!
ICANN and its page about new top level domains – and the US Government speech about it.
9 October 2008
iPhone is top smartphone in the US
Steve Jobs is not dead. Not even a little bit.
Record industry suing the wrong people.
A meeting with Ministers about cutting off your Internet
2 October 2008
The Star-Times on spying on your partner’s mobile phone - last week’s uncritical article and this week’s more balanced one.
A piece about Mersenne primes and how to find them.
First reactions to the first Android telephone.
The Guardian on Google’s open approach versus Apple’s “walled garden”.
25 September 2008
The Star-Times on spying on your partner’s mobile phone.
Minister: Internet is a basic human right
NBR on the problems with the Copyright Act
The article mentioned on air, about cutting off people's Internet for copyright infringement. The article quotes the head of the music lobby as saying that it would be totally unacceptable for them to have to prove their case in court.
18 September 2008 - Technology Birthdays
Google is ten years young. And its new “chrome” browser is an interesting move, but it has been having having teething problems.
The Gnu project is 25 – celebrate with Stephen Fry.
The integrated circuit is 50 years old.
11 September 2008 - LHC
The Large Hadron Rap on YouTube – go on, you know you want to!
Another YouTube – a superconducting magnet quenching.
The Large Hadron Collider’s home page, and an article about it in the Herald.
4 September 2008: Broadband
The head of TelstraClear doesn’t think we need broadband, or Hokitika.
The New Zealand Institute says fast broadband is vital for our future.
28 August 2008: Whether our Politicians get the internet
Jerry Seinfeld will be plugging Vista from now on.
Political parties' web pages: you be the judge!
ACT - Greens - Labour - Maori - National - NZ First - United Future
Political bonus - Winston Peters's blog, and Doug Woolerton's outburst
The fuss about Scrabulous.
21 August 2008 - Sound and video on the internet
Connecting the Clouds - a new book about the history of the Internet in New Zealand, also online as a Wiki.
Internet traces showing the Chinese gymnasts are underage.
Facebook overtakes Myspace. Yawn.
Richard McManus and his blog.
The techy stuff: Wikipedia about video file codecs and container formats.
Get VLC, a great free video and audio player for your computer.
Download YouTube videos to your computer.
Convert flash videos (e.g. from YouTube) to other formats.
The home page of free OGG formats.
Radio NZ's Audio format page.
14 August 2008 - Secret Recordings
The timeline of Internet memes, and what is a meme, anyway?
Cartoon about Google Maps.
UK Prime Minister’s aide loses his BlackBerry.
Voice recording software for the iPhone.
7 August 2008: Traveling with a laptop
The furore over media censorship in China.
More about ACTA – the copyright treaty being negotiated in secret.
31 July 2008: World Internet Project
Internet access in Beijing is slow and censored.
And now we are told that the censorship was never going to be lifted
Australian politicians sanitise their images on Wikipedia, and a tool for finding out who edited what.
British UFO hunter struggles to stay out of US jail.
The World Internet Project in New Zealand, and Richard Wood’s summary of it.
24 July 2008: Keeping your email safe
A young man breathes a sigh of relief.
In future, Wikipedia may require approval for edits.
How email works.
Free email from Google and Fastmail.
10 July 2008: Intellectual Property Rights
The Bankers’ Association’s revised code of practice and comment in the press.
The end of Windows XP. Where to get alternatives – Linux or a Mac.
A leaked copy of the ACTA treaty.
MED’s webpage about ACTA (which doesn’t show up on MED’s search engine).
What the music industry wants to see in the treaty, and commentary on that.
3 July 2008: ICANN, the body that runs Internet domain names
International Internet body ICANN, it’s Wellington-based chair, and its announcement about new top level domains.
Another reason to go to Paris.
26 June 2008: Electronic Voting
Want XP? From 1 July you’ll have to pay extra.
A page about electronic voting security by Avi Rubin.
Story about Diebold voting machines.
Hilarious satirical video about electronic voting.
19 June 2008: Catching child abusers on the Net
Labour and National’s approaches on broadband analysed, and a new report finds that our broadband is slow.
DIA’s page about keeping your children safe and a list of recent prosecutions.
Sunday Star-Times story about a paedophile caught online.
12 June 2008: Hackers
The RepRap machine makes lots of things, including RepRap machines.
Vodafone bringing the new iPhone to NZ from 11 July. Unlocked.
Keeping your computer safe.
The Stephen Levy book on hackers.
The New Hacker’s Dictionary, which is a paper version of the jargon file.
5 June: Censoring the Internet
New York Times on geeks inheriting the Earth.
The perils of owning a modem in Myanmar.
Wikipedia on the Great Firewall of China and Internet censorship in general.
Google’s apologia for censoring itself in China, and Yahoo getting someone in China jailed.
29 May 2008: How the internet is nearly full
South Africa appeals against ISO vote on Microsoft standard, and Microsoft doesn’t want it anyway.
The Internet is running out of addresses.
Wikipedia on IPv6 and a resource site, ipv6.org.
22 May 2008: Competing against Free Software
The Internet is running out of addresses.
Australian Smart Gate system coming to Auckland airport.
A source for Ubuntu CDs in New Zealand. Or, download here.
Competing with free, a piece I wrote a few weeks ago.
Two Wellington companies doing spectacularly well off open source.
The Economist on free stuff online.
15 May 2008: The Politics of Broadband
Telecom won’t be locking it mobile phones.
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 meets a gas giant.
The New Zealand Institute and InternetNZ on fibre to the home.
The National Party’s broadband investment announcement, and Minister David Cunliffe’s speech on the subject.
8 May 2008: Locking mobile phones
The demise of Xtra.
Getting rid of domain name tasting.
Vodafone's announcement about the iPhone.
There’s no link to Vodafone’s announcement about locking their phones because they haven’t published one. But here’s journalist Peter Griffin on the matter.
1 May 2008: Smart Phones
AltTV – New Zealand’s first TV service running across the Internet.
A table comparing mobile phone platforms.
Remember the C5?
About Nine To Noon
From nine to noon every weekday, the Nine to Noon team investigate everything from hard news to lifestyle issues. Nine to Noon was the winner of the best daily or weekly series of an hour or more duration in the 2007 New Zealand Radio Awards.
more ››
Preview email
To join our Week Ahead on Nine to Noon preview email of what's coming up on the show for the week, please send a blank email with an empty subject line to
ninetonoon-join@lists.radionz.co.nz
and respond to the confirmation email that you will receive.
Nine to Noon Galleries
Images periodically displayed in our gallery.
Future Broadcasts
18 February
Bruce Beresford - acclaimed Australian film director whose latest film Mao's Last Dancer comes out this month. The 69-year-old director has a string of successful films to his name, from the Australian movies Puberty Blues and Breaker Morant, the Oscar-winning Driving Miss Daisy and Double Jeapordy.
His latest work, Mao's Last Dancer, is based on the autobiography by Li Cunxin, a Chinese dancer who defected to America in 1981.
23 February
Kathryn speaks to John Irving – the American author of critically acclaimed, best-selling novels including the World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Cider House Rules for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Photograph by Jane Sobel Klonsky
Podcast
The link(s) below can be pasted into your podcasting software.
For more podcasts and the conditions of use, please see our podcast page.