This past week, we were without internet for a full three days. It doesn't seem like much, but I can't remember a time in the past 10 years that we were completely without our main internet connection for so long (disregarding temporary connection performance issues).

I'm not sure what caused it, and despite Internode's (my ISP) best efforts, Telstra haven't given any explanation as to why my whole phone line was unceremoniously disconnected. Internode were great throughout the whole ordeal, keeping me informed every day (sometimes multiple times), and proactively noticing another Telstra stuff-up before I did: Telstra originally only … Read more →

We've all heard of it, or even seen it personally many times: "my account was hacked!". Usually I'll get the scam emails from a friend's email address saying they are trapped overseas and to send them money to help them out, or maybe the general spam or phishing attempts from one of their online accounts.

You might think it won't happen to you, but all it can take is logging in on a computer that might be infected by something, or using the same password for your account on another site that had its servers hacked.

There is … Read more →

After the gnashing of teeth that greeted the news of Google's decision to close down Google Reader (effective in a few days), over the past few months I have tried out more than a few possible replacements.

I have been surprised by how many 'Reader replacements' have popped up or gained attention since the announcement. It definitely seems like Google had largely killed-off a market when they developed Reader, and now have almost single-handedly recreated it by shutting down their service.

A lot are aiming to just re-create Google Reader and it's features (or previous features); The Old Reader, … Read more →