Neil Hillman

The Swiss might have been late to the table when it came to giving women the vote, (1971), but they are certainly no strangers to democracy, holding national referendums on just about every conceivable decision.

So it should come as no great surprise, I guess, that a new Swiss political party calling itself the Anti-PowerPoint Party, is proposing a national referendum to have Microsoft’s presentation software PowerPoint banned from Switzerland!

It is estimated that 11 percent of Swiss people have to attend a PowerPoint presentation, (with a minimum of 10 other people), at least twice a week, at a cost to the country of 2.1 billion Swiss Francs, (about $2.5 billion), of economic loss each year. They also add that 85 percent of people find these presentations demotivating.

But what may be even more surprising than those figures is that the Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP), who see themselves as advocates of approximately 250 Million people worldwide, only need to collect 100,000 signatures in order to hold a national referendum on banning PowerPoint and other similar presentation software in Switzerland!

Where do I sign?…

If, like me, you are a bit of a internet geek, then you too are probably desperate to get your hands on a Google+ invite. If you’re not an internet geek, you’re probably asking, “a Google what?“.

Last week Google launched Google+, their new Social Network a la Facebook, to just a select few. But Sign Up closed agin two days later, and now it seems that neither love nor money can get you in.

For the initial two days, those already signed up could invite others by “sharing” something, then adding their friend’s email address to the “Add more people” box below. The recipient would then recieve the shared content by email, with a red button inviting them to “Learn more about Google+” at the bottom. This button would take them to the Sign Up page.

But as of last Thursday, (30th June), no one has been alowed in. Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President at Google posted “We’ve shut down invite mechanism for the night. Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way. Thank you all for your interest!”

Visitors to the Google+ Sign Up page are greeted with a message, “Already Invited? We’ve temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon.“, and a “Keep Me Posted” button to enter your email address for updates.

Various loopholes and workarounds sprung up. For a short period you could still sign up from a Safari mobile browser, using either an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Android phone, or from a Mac computer with Safari’s user agent set to mobile version.

Another loophole was to use Google’s Chrome browser, and install the Google Plus chrome app. Once installed, clicking on the Google+ icon in a new tab would take you to a functioning Sign Up page. But this and other loopholes have been plugged now, and as of time of writing, I was unable to find any way in. Let me know if you have better luck!

PS. 21-year-old singer / songwriter Taylor Swift obviously had more luck than me, she already has her Google+ profile setup, as does recording artist Soulja Boy and FaceBook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg!

Microsoft announced today that it has bought Skype for a staggering $8 billion, making it the biggest acquisition in the company’s 36-year history. But despite 124m connected users a month, Skype doesn’t actually make a profit. So why has Microsoft paid $8 billion for a company that last year make a loss of $1 million?

Microsoft are playing up the integration into devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone, and connect with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Some believe it’s for simply for the global customer user base.

But I personally think it’s to their answer to iPhone’s FaceTime. I think they foresee a future, a year or two from now, when 25% of the market are walking around having face-to-face conversations with their iPhones, while the rest of their disgruntled users look on in jealousy, and slowly start to succumb to Apple.

New and unsettling facial animation technology that creates a variety of expressions from a single image… developed by those clever Japanese guys at MotionPortrait.
Move your mouse around her head…

On the evening of Thursday, 18th of March, Apple Software Engineer Gray Powell was celebrating his 27th birthday at Gourmet Haus Staudt, a German beer garden just 20 miles from the company’s Infinite Loop headquarters in Redwood City, California.

He also happened to be field-testing the next-generation iPhone at the time. He posted a Facebook update from the secret prototype, (disguised as a regular 3G), “I underestimated how good German beer is“.

Obviously, he underestimated too much, as he promptly set the new iPhone down on the stool next to him and left the bar! Gizmodo got the phone and full story here:
http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone

Rumour is, Bill Gates also left a new Microsoft prototype phone in the bar, but three weeks later it was still there…

Apple is, at this very moment, unveiling the new iPad!

An A4 size version of the iPhone, 0.5 inches thick, 1.5 pounds, 9.7″ touch screen and a 1GHz chip. It comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB. WiFi and Bluetooth, an accelerometer, compass, speaker, microphone and the standard iPod connector, 10 hours battery life and a month of standby time.

Oh, and I want one!

It looks like Moola, (currently in beta), could be the next big thing since Gmail Invites. The Blogosphere isn’t reallt buzzing with this one yet, but if you dig around a bit you will find people looking for invites, selling invites etc.

From what I can gather, Moola, dubbed an “AdverTournament”, is kind of like a TV game show,  except based on the Internet. Currently their only game, (there are more to come), is called “Gold Rush!”, and involves playing “numbers” to trying to reach 32 by trumping your opponent. And, much like Gmail in the early days, registration is by invitation only.

The concept is fairly simple. Moola gives you a penny. You watch a short video advertisement, (to pay for that penny), then play against another member who also has one penny. If you win, you double your money, and if you lose, you go back to the start, and Moola gives you another penny. The theory is that if you doubled your penny 30 times in a row without losing, you could win 10 million dollars, (although in reality if you even got near the one million mark, would you risk all that on a “double-or-nothing” bet)? So far several players have won over $500, with the largest payout currently set at $3660.

Everybody’s talking about Apple’s public beta of “Boot Camp“, technology that allows you install and run Windows XP on your Intel-based Mac, and will be included in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard.

Working in a similar way to Partition Magic’s BootMagic™, by holding down the option key at start up, you will be able to select which partition to boot from. Boot Camp will even burn a CD for you with all the drivers necessary to run Windows on your Mac’s specific hardware configuration.

Now Mac enthusiasts get the opertunity to experience all the same viruses, trojans, worms, spyware and system failures that PC users so enjoy!