Michael Cleland | www.michaelcleland.com.au

April 20, 2012
by Michael Cleland
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Malcolm Turnbull: why build a house when setting up a tent is cheaper and faster?

On Malcolm Turnbull’s blog this morning, entitled Conroy: coalition alternative “quicker and will cost less” Turnbull writes:

Senator Stephen Conroy this morning conceded the Labor Government’s $50 billion version of the National Broadband Network will cost more and take longer than the approach proposed by the Coalition. Speaking on ABC Radio Senator Conroy stated: “It would be quicker and will cost less to build a fibre-to-the-node network. That is just an unambiguous fact.”

What a non-story, Malcolm … with a misleading headline too.

For the ill-informed, they will think your headline infers “quicker” as in a faster data throughput, when you really mean that construction time would be faster.

And of course the coalition’s network would be cheaper, because it would be a vastly inferior piece of infrastructure.

As Tony Windsor said when he chose to back the Gillard government, “You do it once, you do it right and you do it with fibre.”

I feel sorry for you Malcolm that you are hamstrung by bad coalition policy. From the $40 million you made from the sale of ISP Ozemail, you must know that the NBN is the right choice for Australia – a piece of infrastructure that will serve Australia for decades to come. It is a pity that Tony Abbott lacks that sort of vision.

Reading the comments on Turnbull’s post produced and some tweets some great responses:

@nealon Next up @TurnbullMalcolm explains why a tarpaulin is better than a tiled roof as it’s “quicker and will cost less” #NBN

It would have been quicker and cheaper to buy a barge to transport cars across Sydney harbour, instead of building the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

It’s quicker and cheaper to lean a piece of corrugated iron against a tree than to build a house. But I know what I’d rather live in.

It’s quicker and cheaper to have dirt roads than asphalt.

Why build a house when setting up a tent is faster and cheaper?

May 9, 2011
by Michael Cleland
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Why you shouldn’t develop an iPhone app and just get your mobile website going instead

Have you got Managers, Directors or even politicians and people “that love their iPhone so much” at work who are mad keen on you getting an app developed?

Well here’s my rant of why you shouldn’t bother ….

I’m not a fan of apps when a mobile website — accessible by all types of mobile devices — will do the job.

I read an article from Recruitment Directory on why you should build a mobile friendly
website instead of building just an app for iPhones.

The summary is:

Websites work on any device (iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Nokia, Blackberry, Palm)
If your mobile website, such as m.casey.vic.gov.au, pulls content directly from your standard website (which ours does),then you only have to update the content once and it appears on both websites.
In order to use an App version, you must download it - it becomes “yet another app” on your device
A mobile website is just a bookmark / favourite in your browser. Most mobile devices can place a website bookmark on their home screen, effectively the same as an app’s icon
Websites can be updated much easier than an app
Google can find the website and promote it to the world. An app cannot be found or indexed by Google
So much cheaper to develop a website than an app
No need to get it approved by Apple
Not just developing for iPhones, which, while they are popular now, the smartphone market is becoming more diverse. That is, not everyone is buying iPhones
Building iPhone apps tie you into using “yet another vendor” to maintain your content

Now I should mention that this applies to apps for any device - iPhone, iPad, Android, Nokia, Windows Mobile etc..

Even location based services can be done through websites – see theFederal Government website m.toiletmap.gov.au which can pick up your phone’s GPS location to find a public toilet nearby.

Apps should only be developed if they take advantage of a specific function that can’t be done through your browser yet — about the only thing I can think of is something that might use the camera to take a photo and send it somewhere. But even then, posting it to Twitter / Twitpic or just emailing the photo would do the job.

What I did at Casey and what you should do

Develop a mobile version of your website. I developed a mobile version of Casey’s website at m.casey.vic.gov.au - the entire desktop website is available through it.

But the difference is the front page – it has the “most likely to be used on mobiles” things on the front page — contact details, news, emergencies, lost pets etc..

I incorporated a browser sniffer on Casey’s website — this detects if you’re on a mobile device and if you’ve gone to the standard website at www.casey.vic.gov.au it will automatically redirect you to the mobile website at m.casey.vic.gov.au.

Some links for light reading

The use of mobiles to access the web is growing fast and will continue to do so. Here’s a list of links I’ve compiled that make for interesting reading.

Ask your website developer / vendor about a mobile website. It takes just a little bit of work, but it is worth it.

So, in summary, it’s a “no” to apps from me! That is, unless there’s an actual need.

This rant is over.

March 21, 2011
by Michael Cleland
2 Comments

The Great Australian Film (funding distaster)

Jim Schembri wrote about three recent Australian films that have failed at the box office. My favourite Australian dud film of all time is The Wannabes.

I remember when I saw this Nick Giannopoulos film. I was so angry when I saw that film, I emailed Film Victoria at the time with “do not finance” plea to any further Nick Giannopoulos projects. Funnily enough, they did not reply to my email.

That film should never have made it past a draft script and was a total waste of taxpayers’ money. The same could be said for a lot of Australian films.

I have friends that work in the industry and they need to work, but funding bodies should be a lot pickier with what makes it to production.

So much of it comes down to script. If the script is bad, the final product will be bad.

I know that funding bodies are obligated to take risks to get the great Australian story out there and to keep the industry working, but please, please, PLEASE don’t base films on rubbish scripts!

Here’s my review of this motion picture triumph on IMDb. And just for good measure, I resourced and wrote the “Reaction” section for this film’s entry on Wikipedia.

February 25, 2011
by Michael Cleland
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The Oz: NBN bashing again

I can’t believe The Australian’s criticism of the NBN. It’s a national infrastructure project that will have a lifetime of many decades and will be upgradeable to speeds many times faster than is currently available.

At its heart, fibre is basically a pipe to transmit data at the speed of light.

If it costs $40 billion and lasts 30 to 40 years (remember that the copper network has lasted for decades) then its cost might be about $1 billion a year. I know this is an extremely simplistic calculation and ignores maintenance costs etc.. But on that basis, it is extremely cost effective for what it will offer.

Mobile internet usage will continue to grow, but there will always be a scarcity of radio spectrum. Think of the capacity problems that AT&T iPhone users have had with slow internet access and phone drop outs many cities like New York. The more smartphone users on your wireless network, the more this will be a capacity problem eg., Vodafone’s recent network problems.

Fibre and wireless are complimentary technologies. Each will have its purpose.

I can’t believe through ignorance the number of people who think mobile data is the robust and exclusive solution for our future data needs.

February 22, 2011
by Michael Cleland
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Why smear, when you can wash?

This morning The Age had a travel piece on Japanese toilets, and it reminded me of my first time in Japan …

I just loooove the Toto Washlets (they happen to be the premium brand of toilets in Japan). So much so, that we’re renovating and the main bathroom is going to have one installed.

The best tag line for them is from a Toto USA YouTube clip that states, “Why smear, when you can wash.”

Once you’ve tried it, you’ll never go back!

February 19, 2011
by Michael Cleland
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The Australian family car to go electric?

I’ve just been reading about plans for an electric version of the Commodore, in conjunction with Bosch, Futuris and Better Place.

I think this is a great idea and here’s why:

Electricity can come from renewable resources. While most electricity in Victoria is generated by coal at the moment, more will come from solar and wind in the future. Better Place say they are only sourcing power from renewable sources.
Once you’ve solved the power source issue mentioned above, it doesn’t matter what size car you run 100% electric. If the battery is being charged by the sun or wind, then it is essentially free, and isn’t burning fuel, so the size of the car is less important. That is, you don’t have to have a small car. I’ve been a fan of electric cars for a while, but only picked up on this point recently, and it makes sense. So, people who want a big car can still have one as an electric car.
The amount of energy required to generate hydrogen is apparently about the same or near to the amount of energy you can create from burning hydrogen itself. So, even if it burns off as water, currently you still have to use a lot of energy to generate the hydrogen in the first place.

I can’t wait for electric cars to take off. It all makes sense to me and with enough re-charging infrastructure in place, the switch for most drivers will be an easy transition in both economic and convenience terms.

February 10, 2011
by Michael Cleland
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$36bn price for NBN slammed – well I’m slamming back

This morning, The Age published an article slamming the cost of the NBN project.

Well, I’m slamming them back!

What a stupid, stupid report. I’m glad that The Age described the outfit as the right-leaning Economist Intelligence Unit.

Of course things will cost more here. It’s called density of population.

And what if we didn’t push ahead with the NBN? We’d be stuck on Tony Abbott’s narrow minded pathway to a slipshod NBN substitute and pulling funding out of our foreign aid programs.

Another reason why I’m find Abbott frustrating, because he is only looking at it for his political gain, instead of seeing the benefits to the nation.

January 14, 2011
by Michael Cleland
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Social media example: Queensland Floods

I’ve been watching the handling of the Queensland / Brisbane floods from a social media perspective in the last couple of days.

If you’re not sure about the value of Twitter and Facebook for disaster recovery – think again.

Around January 12, 2011, when news of the impending floods was publicised, the Brisbane City Council (BCC) website was overloaded / offline for quite a few days.

One of their solutions was to use their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Facebook is virtually never down – Twitter has its moments – but both give you a great way to communicate with people using a channel they are using a lot on their smartphones (Android, iPhone, Blackberry) as well as work and home PCs.

Brisbane City Council had Tracey (Comms staff, I’ll guess) who was on Facebook and Twitter from 6am to midnight — this seemed to be her only function — she was answering comments every few minutes. Her “voice” was very conversational (ie., not “Council speak”).

As more and more people came to the BCC Facebook page, their wall was filling up. (They allow people to post on their wall, whereas at this point many councils do not). As a result, she would repost the same or similar information regularly, so that the important stuff was always “bubbling to the top”.

They also have a “Notes” tab on their Facebook page, where they would publishing more official style media releases. Tracey would post comments every so often on their wall to tell people to click the Notes tab for official information.

Facebook users would “Like” the BCC Facebook page too (This means that people are essentially subscribing to the BBC’s Facebook posts. People then don’t have to return to the BCC’s Facebook page. As soon as you “Like” something on Facebook, any new posts from it / them will show up in your own news feed).

For Twitter, they (ie., Tracey) were doing similar stuff. Tweeting new info as it came to hand “Thanks everyone, we don’t need volunteers to fill sand bags anymore”. Tracey would tweet links to flood maps on the official BCC website (which they switched to a lower bandwidth “just text and no pretty pictures” version to help prevent it overloading).

Finally, they the BCC Twitter feed would retweet important information from Qld Police, Energex (electricity shutdown notifications) and anything else they felt would be of interest to their followers.

(Followers are like subscribers to your twitter messages. Retweeting is forwarding messages from a 3rd party’s twitter account so that your followers get that info, without having to subscribe to 3rd parties).

Sooooo, this is something that I hope you reflect on. A lot of people will never visit a Council website, they’ll never think to subscribe to an SMS notification service. But chances are they – or friends of theirs – will find you on Twitter or Facebook — and that’s when you’ll have the capability to contact a whole new audience in a time of crisis.

I’ve added some PDFs from BCC’s Facebook and Twitter page from earlier in the week. The first page or two are screenshots, the following pages are an extract of the stream of messages flying back and forth.

Finally, Qld Premier Anna Bligh has been doing some great tweets at twitter.com/TheQldPremier Some must be from her Comms people, but many are obviously personally from her. She’s been using Twitter from her Blackberry to post news, lighter comments and uplifting photographs.

All worth a good look.

I really felt motivated to let you know my thoughts on this. I hope you’ve got either a new point of view from it or it confirms what you’ve been thinking already.

December 14, 2010
by Michael Cleland
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Recyclable charity: Kiva

If you like the idea of “recycleable charity”, then consider kiva.org

You can help fund microcredit loans, by contributing $25 towards a loan (usually totalling about $500 – $1000) to enable people in developing and third world countries invest in their own businesses.

Each month, a portion of your contribution is paid back, and then you can reloan that to someone else, or withdraw the money altogether.

All of your money – that’s 100 per cent – goes to the “entrepreneur” (you can donate money to Kiva to assist with running costs). People you loan to do pay interest to a local microcredit agency in their country.

For example, you might help loan money to someone to buy a new machine for their furniture making business, or stock for their store.

You can browse Kiva to see photos and stories of the people who you are actually loaning your $25 to. As you browse, you can filter by country, gender or industry.

I first read about this in Bill Clinton’s book “Giving” and I believe Oprah mentioned it in her “ultimate gifts”.

I’ve been a “capital raiser” on kiva.org for 2 years now and have helped loan money to 60 individuals and groups. I’ve got people involved at my work for Kris Kringle and we’ve pooled together for over 20 loans.

It is a great feeling!

There were some comments about The Age’s article about a good number of Kiva’s loans now being back filled.

RichG, you’re correct that Kiva NOW does backfill the loan they’ve already made with your money, but that has only been in the last year.

Kiva has gained sufficient momentum that they can now send funds through without having to wait for the donations to come through. The benefit of this is that people asking for the loan can get the money faster (maybe saving a month or more of delay) and so can get to use it on their project.

You as the loaner though, still reply upon that individual paying back the loan to YOU, so in this way, you still have a direct connection to that entrepreneur, even if they got money before you donated it. It’s all a bit “back to the future”, but the intention is good and it works.

October 15, 2010
by Michael Cleland
0 comments

NBN FUD

There’s been a lot of press about the NBN, and so much of it is littered with FUD – fear, uncertainty, doubt. The fear that it will cost a lot, the uncertainty that it is the right technology, the doubt that it will be taken up in great numbers.

Andrew Darby’s article in The Age today gives a typical example of this. Small townships in Tasmania were the first ones connected to the NBN, on the basis of nation building and not leaving rural communities behind.

The locals in the article don’t understand the technology or its potential benefits. This is exactly the kind of scenario that anti-NBN proponents seize upon. They’ll say that people don’t want it, that wireless is the future.

It frustrates me when people say that radio will be faster, when this will clearly never be the case, especially as radio spectrum is a scarce resource.

Sometimes, you just have to tell the ill-informed or ignorant “trust us”. At $43 billion, this is an infrastructure project that will replace copper and last for many, many decades, so will be well worth it.