Mangrove Mountain Computer Club

Early morning crowds, irate pedestrians, wildly enthusiastic Apple Store employees….the Sydney launch of the iPad was everything you’d expect from a big Apple product launch. Read more…

An on-demand video service called Google TV, provided either through an Internet enabled television or its own brand digital box, has just been announced.

Describing it as an “entertainment hub” the search engine company says its Google TV is bringing the web to your TV and your TV to the web, if you see what we mean.

More details here.

Samsung’s latest LED series includes bundled software

and a specialised camera package available via Skype online.

ABC iView enables you to catch up with TV programs that you missed and watch them on your computer on a Broadband Internet connection.

Telstra is attempting to steal some of the iPad’s thunder – and arrest plummeting fixed line revenues – by launching a tablet-like, app-filled device it describes as “the next generation of home phone”. But as Telstra’s executive director in its consumer marketing division, Jenny Young, explains, while the iPad is designed for people who are out and about, Telstra’s T-Hub, to be available from Tuesday, is more at home in the kitchen.

The package comes with one cordless handset but up to five can be added at additional cost. Calls can also be made handsfree using the touchscreen.  The device can send and receive SMS messages but this will only work with mobiles on the Telstra network.

The T-Hub will be available from Tuesday as part of 15 different bundle options. One option, the Home Bundle 12GB plan, costs $109 a month plus $35 upfront and includes unlimited local calls, 12GB of data and a modem/router combo.

Existing Telstra customers will be able to buy the T-Hub on its own for $299. More information here.

BigPond Elite Liberty 25GB ADSL Broadband Offer for $49.95 per month on a 24 month plan – ENDS 31 May 2010.
If you’re eligible, you could receive up to $30 off the standard monthly BigPond Elite Liberty 25GB access fee.

More details here.

If you need to buy a new copy of Microsoft Office but don’t want an instantly outdated suite when Office 2010 is released later this year, you’re in luck: If you buy Office 2007 any time between March 5 and September 30 of this year, you automatically qualify for a free upgrade to Office 2010 when it’s released.

More information here.

Indications are that Office 2010 will be broadly available in June.  It adds Office Web Internet-based applications that work in a browser and for the first time will have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

A news report in Forbes says that China has blocked Google with its great firewall, now the world waits to see if Australia’s Minister for Censorship, Senator Stephen Conroy, will do the same following his outrageous attacks on Google.

Australia’s glorious Minister for Broaband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, has been in the news for months over his nefarious plans to censor the Internet in Australia under the guise of protecting users from content normally refused classification in other mediums.

As noted in my previous article on the subject, “Captain Conroy, Internet Enforcer, slams Google”, the erstwhile and presumably otherwise well-meaning but still meddling Senator has slammed Google in a yesterday’s ABC radio debate on Internet filtering in Australia.

The Minister tried to paint Google as a company that has had its own issues with privacy and not doing evil, which are certainly valid points, and even iTWire’s own James Riley has written an article on Google being “the world’s biggest filter”, but Google’s stance on Internet censorship is plain: it says no.

Read the full article here.

Microsoft is rising to the challenge of Google Docs, offering free Office applications on the web as it releases Office 2010. New paid versions of the ubiquitous office suite will be available to businesses in May and consumers in June, but its Office Web Apps component is already available in beta through Microsoft Office Live.

Anyone with a Windows Live account can create, modify or share Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents for free. They do not need Microsoft software installed on their machines.

Gartner predicts web-based office suites will grow at 34 per cent annually through to 2013 to satisfy market demand. Google recently purchased DocVerse, a company that enables Microsoft applications in the cloud. It raises the question: with so many free web-based office software options available, why pay for a new version of the proprietary suite?

More details here

Google’s Android will quickly overtake Apple’s iPhone market share. It may seem like an outlandish prediction given the fact that Apple has sold over 65 million iPhones/iPod touches and hundreds of millions of people use iTunes, but we’ve seen this movie before and we know how it ends. I’m referring to the original Macintosh operating system which was superior in nearly every way but lost the PC war to Microsoft’s Windows. Apple’s insistence on control will lock out the rest of the business world turning them into competitors whose innovation, marketing and more consumer-friendly features will benefit their chief rival.  More info…