Toy Sale – Wii for me?

Well it seems everyone is having a toy sale. Big W, K Mart, Target, and  Myer. The XBox is on sale, someone even has it for $299!!

My house wants a Wii… yes we don’t have one yet. I know it is hard to believe… They are on “sale” but are sold out EVERYWHERE!

Not much of a discount either, I think $388 is the best price I’ve seen. I guess we’ll take the plunge this weekend and hunt one down.

I want an iPhone

iPhone goes on sale tomorrow and the only network that really have 3G where I live is Telstra. Now, I have shares in these guys and I want them to make money but I don’t like been ripped off and so far they are the only Australian network not to release pricing information…

Their website is the worst out of all the players and I almost expect them to have got some crazy customisations done to the software to make it Telstra-ish.

I guess we will find out tomorrow at 8 am…

Mobile Me … Exchange for the rest of us?

Apple might be on a winner here…. www.me.com

Not sure if Google is involved since this is the replacement to .Mac and the rumour on the wire was that Google was involved in the replacement… 2 Weeks ago it became clear the .Mac was dead.

If Google isn’t part of this, can they please build the same thing for those of us not wanting to pay the monthly fee or that run something other than Mac or Windows?

I actually thought that Microsoft’s Mesh would offer more of this Exchange like capability but I guess that was too much to hope for…

Next question, how much is the iPhone going to cost here in Australia?

Microsoft Mesh and Google App Engine – Up in the clouds

Google App Engine was publicly discussed first but the Microsoft Live Mesh project wasn’t far behind.

Somehow since I’m in Australia and that the weekend it all went live I was offline I can’t seem to get an account with either.

The Google version at least lets you download a local test server and sandbox to play in but for now it is only in Python.

The Microsoft version has more freedom in terms of the programming language you choose to use by seems more restrictive as to who they will let play with the Beta.

Although these two technologies are different on the surface (and inside in many places) they WILL end up competing for the same applications, developers, and users.

Why? Well simply because if you breakdown what each of them really offer the application developer then you’ll see that they are both going to do the same thing just in a slightly different way.

At this point in time I’d say that the Microsoft offering looks more featured and has the desktop support needed to ease users into the true Web 2.0 application world but Google isn’t one to give up easily and they will have to Open Source/Linux community on side from day one… Will this become the browser war of next few years?

What if Apple only pick one to support natively on the iPhone? Who is the bigger threat to them, Google and Android or Microsoft and Windows Mobile?

Facebook Garage Melbourne

Last Friday was the first Melbourne Facebook developer Garage. I had Friday off work anyway so I popped in for a couple of hours and next thing I know I was sitting on the discussion panel with Markus Weichselbaum (The Broth), David Eedle (collectZing), Terri Dentry (thinkRED), and Tom Beeby (TravelApps).

For me it was just so great to meet these people, plus all the other people I met at the event.

The event itself can be found at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=9997025951

And Facebook Developers Melbourne can be found at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21606671216