For those of you that haven’t discovered their site, I highly recommend that you check out the Smashing Magazine website. They carry a great range of how to’s and example of beautiful things. This can range from photos to websites. Font to stencils. I don’t know how they find them but they do an inspiring job of bringing them together.

Their latest article, 50 Beautiful Movie Posters, is a testament to their talent. Keep up the good work!

Yesterday – Saturday 27th October – must have been one of the most perfect spring days in Sydney since I’ve been here. It was around 30degrees, clear sky and a very light wind to keep it pretty much perfect.

It was Dave’s stag do, so we figured a day at the races followed by dinner at Churrasco’s in Coogee was of the order.

Everyone was dressed up to the nine’s, and it was really nice to see everyone looking so smart. Was really classy till later in the day when everyone was drunk and mildly sunburnt. A few of us were still feeling the previous night’s effects on our body, but thankfully, that age old tradition of hair of the dog seemed to do the trick.

As for the racing, well… Lets just say that there’s a few bookmakers that are better off than me now. The horses just didn’t seem to be in my favour. I had several place wins, but as everyone knows, they very rarely pay the bills.

But it was great fun, if a little costly. Such a great atmosphere, and if you’re here for the Randwick Spring Carnival, it’s highly recommended as a fun day – apart from trying to get a cab afterwards.

So from there, we headed down to Coogee – via Steve’s for a top up – to eat at Churrasco in Coogee. It’s a Brazilian style BBQ where you pay a set amount – $35 – and they keep topping up your plate.

They wander round with a selection of Pork, Steak (beef), chicken, lamb and pineapple (surprisingly good when barbecued!). Naturally, the rice and potatoes are ignored as the meat is so tender and well cooked that it seems to just melt in your mouth. I made it through 14 or 15 servings. Steve somehow managed 20. Good effort!

The atmosphere was great, with everyone sitting around wooden benches, and chatting. In true Brazilian style, everyone was very friendly, including the staff (most of them). Good food, great wine, great atmosphere. I’d definitely say give it a try. It’s a 7 out of 10.

First off, a confession… I’ve been a little lazy the last few weeks. My bike has been sitting there, pinning for me to take him out to stretch his wheels. So yesterday I did, going out as usual, but something I’d read recently made me keep my eyes on the roads a little more.

The headwind was a killer! Every direction I went, it seemed to be in my face. And Sydney’s not a very flat place, so those hills suddenly seemed a lot worse!

The Sydney Morning Herald recently ran an article, Sydney needs to wake up to the benefits of pedal power.

In it, Sydney is compared to European cities and how the help and encourage cycling. While I was out I started noticing things like the drain covers running in the same direction as you’re cycling, making them into something akin to a cattle grid for bikes – something some car drivers would love I dare say. The potholes were still there, but seem to have gotten bigger. And suddenly I was so much more conscious of how I was having to swerve from the safety of the gutter into the traffic to avoid falling over. It was very disconcerting!

But then, the areas where there were cycle lanes, the cars were very good and stayed clear and didn’t pull across in front of you – or look like their indecision might see you eating metal and tarmac.

And then a curious thing that I’ve always wondered about in London is the coloured areas – the green area of road with a cycle symbol on. I only passed one, but I could visible see the cars a lot more aware of me. It was weird. Almost like I suddenly had a beacon on my head and was 20 times more visible.

I’m hoping given the number of bikes now sold, the number of people now cycling and the cost of petrol that they’ll fix the potholed and turn the grating covers. Paint some more cycle lanes and add in those magic green areas. Read that article, especially if you work for the transport department in Sydney! Please!

There’s just so much I want to write, and but sometimes I just can’t get the inspiration. does anyone else find that? You spend so long work, with your friends, and reading everyone else’s Blog that it’s hard to find the time to indulge in life’s little pleasure of writing for fun for yourself.

I’m a project manager at the moment, and that sees my day filled up with organising people, writing technical documents and ensuring that projects make money.

Tech writing is fun and challenging, coming up with solutions and describing them in a way everyone else on the project will both understand and find useful, whilst still solving the problem. But, it’s for work, and good as it is to get positive feedback, it’s just not yours…

I mean it is yours as far as you researched it, you decided what it should do and you wrote it. But, most of the time, it didn’t come from something you read or did that inspired you. If it did, that’s a good feeling, but a lot of the time it doesn’t given the satisfaction of just writing because you want to.

Now Blogs are a different story. They’re usually based on something that really pipped your interest. Perhaps something you read, or an encounter that got you thinking. Perhaps something on telly or in the news. You know it when it hits you, and you know you have to write it.

Next question. When do you do it? That’s the real trick. My best time seems to be sitting in front of the telly in the evening. That sounds odd, but it gives me the time to just drift dreamily in and out of what I write.

It’s strange, but the background noise and distraction seems to help me focus. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the comfort and familiarity of the surroundings. Maybe the telly gives off some kind of weird aura. I don’t know.

But I know I enjoy it when and I do it, and I really need to do it more. Both at home and at work. With the internet as my inspiration, I don’t really have an excuse not to, do I!

OK, so it’s not the same method used in older machines where you could flick a turbo button and double your processor speed, but it is a turbo boost to the chip. The latest chips are multi-core, but also able to have cores turned on and off, which will save power and boost performance.

Some friends and I – being the geeks we are – were reminiscing over that classic piece of computer history. Why did they ever remove it? Think about that for a second. I guarantee that 95% of the time, you’re not using all the power on the chip, so why not save power and slow it down? Makes sense to me!

Reading the background on these chips, they sound pretty awesome! Improved everything… That’s a little broad but they better at everything! Speed, power consumption, 3D (apparently twice the performance), better caching and memory handling. Have they missed anything? Read the specs on that site. There’s more to it than that, but that’s a pretty impressive so far! Role on 2009…

Read more about Intel’s new next-generation microarchitecture (codenamed “Nehalem”).

Today, I saw a video for a new game that take the idea of combining 2D and 3D to a very different, and rather cool level! It’s simple look is suddenly escalated when the 3D kicks in… And what a way they do it! See what you think.

I thought I’d write something a little different to my normal as I start updating my site. Toothpaste. I’m going to talk about toothpaste.

Why? Well, it’s different, but I have to also confess to having been a loyal Sensodyne user – used to have sensitive teeth, but not anymore. When I say loyal, I’ve probably been using it for the last 6 or 7 years – that I can remember. It may be longer than that, who knows. But the point is that some things in your life, you just don’t like to change. You’re happy using the same thing, or doing the same thing day after day.

Then comes that time when you question whether you should change. You break into a cold sweat… Something you know so well. Something that you’re so comfortable with. Can you change? Should you change.

Well, I thought what the hell. A new toothpaste had just come out that had a foaming action and promised to make your teeth feel even cleaner than normal. So what the hell, I thought I’d give it a try. Lets see if those promotional guys were telling the truth.

And you know what? It was worth the change. I’m not going to name the product, but you should be able to work it out from my description and the ads. My teeth do actually feel cleaner. As does the rest of my mouth. I’ve always had this thing about my front teeth never quite feeling spotless except for that day after the dentist has polished them. Now they feel almost that clean. In case you can’t tell, I’m genuinely impressed by this change.

It’s actually to the point where I’m now looking at the other things I’ve repeatedly used. Even the daily routine that could possibly use a refresh. A change is good. I’ll keep you posted on any others.

Following on from my previous blog outlining the pain I went through getting my iPhone working after doing an update, I used the newly release Pwnage 2.0 hours after they released it…. And this was after I said I wouldn’t do it till a few more people had successfully used it – I figure that the 900 odd comments that appeared in that time saying how well it worked, and with my previous experience, I’d do it.

It went almost flawlessly… Got it wrong first time as I ticked a wrong box. Mine’s an American iPhone in Australia. 2nd time, it worked perfectly! Well done guys! Seriously, they’ve been working so hard to do these for free – I hope that UK company has been shut down now – and have done such an amazing job!

So, now I have it, I dived into the iTunes Apps Store. Bad idea… I now have the following installed on my phone:

• Facebook – Great little app, which gives you all the main features of Facebook, and works almost flawlessly.
• Last.fm – I’m a big fan of Last.FM and used the original App a fairbit (for reference it plays really well on an iPod Hifi).
• Phonesaber – Pointless but great fun.
• Remote – Apple’s free application for controlling your iTunes is a work of art really. Pair it with your iTunes, and it’s like browsing your iPod but it’s the collection on your computer.
• Shazam – I used this service in the UK regularly, and now it’s out on the iPhone. Hold it up to a speaker and it will tell you what the song is playing (most of the time).
• Crash Bandicoot 3D – The Bandicoot crashes onto the iPhone in an addictive little game where you control the character using the phones accelerometer to steer, and a
• iPint – this takes the biscuit for a waste of time, but somehow it’s amusing. Slide a beer down the bar, then your iPhone fills with beer which you then drink by tilting your phone.
• Sudoku Unlimited – I had a version of this on Nano and got quite quickly hooked. Reading the reviews this a down to earth version that lets you simply play Sodoku. What more could you want?
• TwitterMe – Yep, it lets you post tweets on Twitter
• Super Monkey Ball – Everyone saw this in the keynote speech, and it is as good as it looks – although it does take a little getting used to.
• Texas Hold ‘em – Apple’s take on the most popular card game is worth the price. It does exactly what you’d expect from a game of Hole ‘Em
• myLite – erm, it’s a torch that does torch type things. Yep, it turns your phone’s screen into a bright light.
• AIM – allows you to use American Online Messenger and .Mac/mobileMe messaging on your iPhone.
• Pinball RC – I love pinball. This is fun, but it’s a little chuggy at times. Good fun though.
• BrainChai – Brain Training similar to that on the Gameboy DS. Good fun!

In conclusion, the upgrade was a great thing! If you’re not afraid it might fail, then Pwn your iPhone now!

I made a small mistake and jumped on the iPhone 2.0 firmware a little too quickly, forgetting that my 2G phone came from eBay and would need a little work to fix. Add to that, that my phone had the 04.04.05_G firmware – something I discovered later on was a real issue.

So, booting it into DFU mode, and downgrading my iTunes to 7.5, I just couldn’t restore it running in OS X. It was giving me permission errors on the phone. I followed every guide, and still nothing. So, I booted into Windows XP, thinking that Microsoft’s approach to security might work in my favour. It did!

With a flashed phone, I set about jailbreaking and activating it. No problems there – although I did find that sometime Pwnage failed a couple of time due to permissions and required another restore (I think I restored the phone something like 30 times over the weekend).

Next up came installing my freshly created install. No problem. Then loaded it up and watched bootneuter (error 5) appear repeatedly… Nooooo….

So, I tried Liberty+ and Ziphone (I since found out that the latter may have been a bad idea… Search for “Ziphoned”) Nothing would unlock it. Further searching, and I found that you need to delete the bootloaded on some iPhones. Did that, went through the steps (again, and again), always hit the same problem.

Further searching, and I found that potentially ziphone had done something to my phone – I actually don’t think it was this, and was the iPhone 2.0 firmware. But, that did lead me down the final path to success. There are modified version of that program that will remove the bootloader and downgrade it.

Tried that. Nooooo…. turns out my phone has a version that nothing removed. Version 04.04.05_G. Nothing removes it, till I found a link on a YouTube video to Kiphone. My heart raced as I watched it purge that evil bootloader and install a downgraded one.

After that, everything worked flawlessly and I now have a fully working 2G iPhone again. And, this worries me a little, but after 3 days of not having it, I realised even more how much I like it, and had missed it!

Anyway, for those in the same position, 2 links for you:

Modified Ziphone to remove older bootloader:
Modified Ziphone for bootloader removal

iclarified’s tutorial on using kiphone to remove firmware version 04.04.05_G:
Remove and downgrade iPhone 04.04.05_G with kiphone

I’ll start by saying that I’m not an expert in this area (yet), so everything you read hear is a combination of my broad range of experience and knowledge, combined with my enthusiasm for online success. I’m currently filtering these ideas into my work, and evolving my skills to help better myself, my company and most importantly, my customers.

There’s more to driving your site to succeed online than just adding a blog and content syndication to your site. You need to market it, and in turn your brand (often yourself). With the birth of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, it has become common practice to think that a site will succeed purely by bolting on a blog, and sticking up some photos and regularly updating the content.

At to that the social phenomenon, people started adding send to a friend links and social network tags, such as Digg and Facebook. Those are great tools, as long as your users click on them and share your message. You could do it yourself, or ask your friends to do it, but it starts to look a little bit obvious and also reduces your rating on those sites if you continually push your own content in. You need to come up with ways to connect with them and make them want to do it. If you’re really good, and connect well, you don’t even need these tools – look at how well Apple does if you need proof.

This is where the advertising industry has one up on web development companies, and where they should learn from each other. Part of their mission is to connect with the customer – in this case, your site’s user – and make them feel you know them and that they’re special. Rather than relying on you to try and work out what to do and write, they aim to deliver elements that appeal to a broad audience, and bring them in by going a few steps further.

1. Know the brand’s customers. OK, for a new brand, this is where the brand and marketing guys come in, and it’s a little more tricky to get right first time, but what I’m going to say in this blog covers that (think competitors). But what does knowing the customer mean? It means start by looking at who your loyal customers are. The ones that have been with you a while, and will stay with you. I’ll say for example to be generic, that might be the 30-50 age group who grew up with your brand and stayed with it. Then look at the ones around that. How can you market to them without alienating the ones you already do so well with? Read what they read. Watch what they watch. It’s tricky, and something that takes a lot to get just right – I’m about to start doing this for one of my clients and I’m can’t wait to start!

2. Get to know the brand’s rivals. This is a bit of a no-brainer if you think about it. We all know it makes perfect sense, but we also know it’s an easy thing to forget or skim over. What are they doing? When are they doing? And most importantly, what do we do better than them that could boost our market share? Then ask if there’s anything they do better that we need to steer clear of – that’s not to that if they really do do it better, you can’t use it, but make sure it won’t come back to have a detrimental effect on what you’re trying to achieve.

3. Know the brand’s products. Does this sound like an extension of the last points in a way? It shouldn’t! If you don’t know everything about the products you’re trying to sell, how can you do a better job of selling them to people who know nothing about it? Know the strengths. Know the weaknesses (but don’t tell the client). Live and breath their products if you can – or find someone that does.

4. Stay in touch with your users. In the day and age of database this, and database that, it’s easy to slap a ‘Stay in touch’ box on a website. But ask yourself what that actually means? Does it mean a monthly, or bi-annual newsletter perhaps? Perhaps it never gets used. I don’t know. All I know is that when I see that box, and I see it not used to it’s best effect, I get upset. That box means that someone has looked at your site, and thinks that you have something that others don’t, and they want to make sure you tell them what you’re doing. If you don’t talk to them, you’re missing a real opportunity and at the same time letting them down! But then, why not go one step further if the product permits. Why not encourage your users to turn that email address into a user account on your site? One that lets them enter competitions periodically? One that actively encourages them to come back, and also gives you the chance to make their experience that little bit more personal? Make them realise that you really connect with them, and want to ensure they get even more from you than they already have.

5. Get to know them better. When users register for a site, you general collect the basic information. Collecting more than that is difficult, but why not ask them anyway? If you can find out that a large chunk of your sites users actually fall into a category that you want to target in point 1, then you know you’re on the right track or have succeeded. Why not ask them how old they are, what they do, how they found you, would they recommend you, and what they think of you. That’s all information you can potentially use later on to do an email or other promotion to them to help make them feel special and that the brand connects with them. OK, so some of those questions are a little sensitive, and they don’t need to be mandatory, but you could give them an incentive to tell you – and that might encourage them to tell their friends too… Suddenly for that one person, you might have 10-20 more customers just for asking more questions to sell to them.

6. Now work out how to deliver. This is a huge topic, and something that I couldn’t possibly cover here. What sites to advertise on. What sites to contribute to. What will appeal to the online community? Should you be thinking about a viral campaign or a competition? Would a Facebook application or Facebook group work well for you? Perhaps a blog would be enough… Ultimately, it boils down to your client’s budget, but you also need to make them aware of what can be done to give them the best return on their investment.

So that’s 6 points. There’s a lot more than that I could write, but that’s a brief take on what I see as a basic strategy to beginning to succeed online. There’s more to come that feeds off that, like viral marketing, banners, offline to online. The list goes on, but you can see where my head is. I’m in the position of moving from being the Technical Director in charge of delivering sites, to being someone more strategic who comes up with the ideas.

I see the web as a world of opportunity. And damn I’m excited by the direction I’m moving in! Please let me know if I’ve said anything you disagree or perhaps really like. And if you want to give me some words of encouragement that I’m going in exactly the right direction, I always welcome and encourage any feedback.