I was editor for the first edition of Programming PHP and, like all O’Reilly books, there was a vigorous discussion with the authors about which animal should be on the cover. All the recognizable megafauna have gone and we’re left with different types of birds, bugs, and fish, so conversations about covers inevitably start from a “hey, I was expecting to choose between elephant and tiger, and you gave me a friggin bird!” handicap. Programming PHP was no different.

Read this ABC news story on digital frames coming with viruses installed if you want a glimpse at an unpleasant future. Ubicomp ("ubiquitous computing", aka spimes aka real world objects with computation and network capability) promises wonderful things: fridges and pantries that network to produce your shopping list, art that knows who’s looking at it, etc. But where there’s a networked CPU there’s a botnet-in-waiting.

Reading this ComputerWorld article I see that the frames only infected the PC if you plugged it into the USB port to load with pictures. How long before a networked photo frame sniffs packets, portscans, and mails passwords back to the mothership? It’s a shame that infected PCs are so cheap (that link is to a PDF on the malware industry by Kiwi Foo attendee Peter Gutmann) that there’s not a business model in having the botnet creators subsidize the manufacture of trojan frames.

Julie Starr faced an interesting problem recently: how to explain RSS, aggregators, even Twitter to a room full of journalism students … without slides or a net connection. In attempting this, as she says, she “found a new respect for teachers this week”. As a recovering teacher (or, as we’re called when companies pay the bill and we have no pedagogic qualifications, trainer) I thought I’d give it a go.

I often joke that Foo Camp (“Friends of O’Reilly”) should be Font Camp (Friends of Nat Torkington) in New Zealand. I love typography and was delighted to find “The Font Scene in New Zealand”, a list of typographers and fonts made by New Zealanders or by New Zealand companies. My favourite so far is Feijoa (PDF), made by Kris Sowersby who was also featured in the latest Idealog.

I just got back from a week in the US for Foo Camp, where I had a great time shopping two ideas around:

• New Zealand can be a hub of innovation, and
• Kids aren’t being turned onto science and technology as careers

Re: the first idea, this interesting CNet news article talks about how the 1980s and 1990s saw Indian and Chinese technologists imported into Silicon Valley to fuel the great tech booms then. Now those technologists are returning home to create startups and build the local version of Silicon Valley. Ben Nolan and John Clegg from ProjectX are examples of this in New Zealand.

There were 1.24 million active internet subscribers in New Zealand between March and September 2005 (NZ pop = 4M, remember)
70%, or 869,300, were modem users
Total residential internet penetration was around 30%
Business uptake of internet connections increased by 17%
66 ISPs compete for the 1.24 million customers
Dial-up access increased 4% from March to September

Figures from Statistics New Zealand quoted by Computerworld, found via a blog post by Mr Dee.

[I wrote up these thoughts for the NZ-2.0 list, but thought you might be interested]

I’ve been thinking lately about Things To Do In 2006, and trying to figure out where technology will go in the coming year and where there are opportunities to ride that wave and win. I’ve come up with eight broad areas, each of which I could easily build a company (or a half-dozen companies!) in.

I think I’m probably doing it a favour calling it a conference: Convergence Oceania was a Wireless Forum sell shop, an expo hall with a room featuring the biggest exhibitors. Everyone’s Powerpoint deck was focused to their own product story. Good thing it was free :-)

The expo hall was interesting, though. The usual big boys were out in force (I missed the Telecom and Vodaphone Big Name Speakers because I arrived after they did their thing) but there was an interesting mix of independents, VARs, and importers. I was particularly taken by AnyData, Aangel, and Minimax. I’ll write them up on my Radar blog.

I can see my house from here.

I can see my house from here.