Anyway I knew all about the new iPhone, because it made top news this morning (more on it in a sec) but what I didn’t know was that the Windows Live Wave 4 Web Services have begun to roll out today, that was until I got home.

First I’ll address the new iPhone, I’m just not interested! Steve Jobs is a marketing genius who can sell people anything, especially things they’re never going to use or things that already exist or things that will actually be annoying. The big one seems to be the front facing Camera. Most smart phones (I know my HTC Touch Diamond does) already have a front facing camera, and guess what – I’ve never used mine and I don’t know many people who have used theirs either. The fact is, in Australia it’s too damm expensive to video call so what would you bother? If you’re going to video call iPhone to iPhone via Wi-Fi, then why not just use Skype on a laptop, which is the world leader for video chatting (or use Windows Live Messenger). Multitasking is actually good, looks well implemented, got to give Apple credit there, but iAds, oh hang on a sec… you’re trying to tell me, having pop up fully interactive ads in your apps is a good thing? I don’t want ads in my apps, I just want to use them. Every modern web browser comes with a pop up blocker, because we generally don’t like pop ups, so why would we want them clogging up our phones? One other good point, for the first time it seems that iPod Touch users will be allowed to upgrade to version 4.0 software (now called iOS 4) on their 3rd generation (and 2nd gen but missing features) iPod Touch for Free instead of having to fork out $20 or so. Apple peoples can download iOS 4 later this month and buy an iPhone 4 in July.

Moving on now to the news which I’m much more excited about, and the news which will probably gain an article on my main website once it’s all finished, Windows Live Wave 4 web services! The rollout has begun. I know most of you aren’t going to notice this yet, because currently Windows Live Hotmail and Contacts have not been updated (and most people I know only use Hotmail on the web, not the other wonderful services available), but everything else has. The new header means that you will be able to see at a glance on any page you’re on how many unread emails you have and how many of your friends are online and even start a conversation with them in the browser. The big thing for me though is that in Wave 3, Facebook, MySpace etc were all integrated into Windows Live, but they didn’t do much – this time, all the news feed updates from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and many many other services can be integrated into one feed that appears throughout Windows Live and (when the Essentials beta comes out) inside Windows Live Messenger). You’ll also be able to link up all your Facebook contacts with your Windows Live Messenger contacts (removing duplicates) and then chat to people through Facebook chat via Windows Live Messenger (which is awesome because I hate Facebook chat).

The other big one, is Windows Live Skydrive now has Windows Live Office – which means, Office Web Apps are here – WOOOO! Now these certainly aren’t fully featured (they’re a bit lacking actually), but when coupled with Hotmail when it gets updated soon hopefully, I see this as a massive time saver! Imagine getting an email with a Word Document attachment and editing and sending it back to the person without leaving Hotmail! It’s going to become a reality very very soon!

Anyway – I’ll leave it there, there will be a lot more in my article very soon, but I’m hoping you’ll all check out what’s currently available and realise there’s much more coming! Hotmail is NOT updated yet, so you’ll have to go to http://home.live.com/ if you want to see the changes!

The rest of the term was just the standard types of assessments for year 12 students: reports, essays, exams and orals. I also have been keeping the minutes and agendas for the after school prefect meetings all under control and up to date. The term has turned out really tiring actually. It finished off with the QCS practise test, to see how much the in school tuition has improved our results. Personally I do not think setting an all day test on the last day of school is such a wonderful idea, but that’s what occurred. I also think that the Queensland education system and the way we examine and assess senior students across the state is fundamentally broken, because what everyone else in my subject or my school scores in a test, should not affect what my exit score should be. That gives schools with more resources and a better socioeconomic area a better advantage over schools who don’t have these positive factors, but that’s another story for another time. I also finished uploading all 419 podcasts to the Spoonman Fan Club. The Spoonman was an awesome late night talkback announcer on Triple M from 2005-2008  and when his show finished, KG and I decided to set up a central tribute/info website for him. It’s taken me nearly 1 and 1/2 years to upload all the podcasts, but they’re all there now.

I’ve also been following the developments in the tech industry, most of them by Microsoft. The Windows Phone looks absolutely fantastic and I cannot wait to get one next year. Good on Microsoft for starting afresh with their phones and trying something different, instead of just being an iPhone clone. The other big one for me is Windows Live Wave 4. I obtained a leaked copy of the Live Essentials for Wave 4 and so I may be writing an article about them soon. Here’s a sneak peak of  Windows Live Messenger 2010.

Windows Live Messenger 2010 Beta Milestone 2

These holidays I have a few things planned. It will be mainly relaxing, but I have a few tasks and little jobs to do that will keep me busy and also Sam and I plan to visit The Bryan Madigan of SeaFM 91.9 on the Sunshine Coast. He’s the guy who used to take the callers on the Spoonman show and also was one of the 3 announcers of the ATFS podcast. Lastly – on Wednesday when Windows Live Messenger had a bug in in when people were appearing offline when they were really online, I posted here the instructions on how you could get around that. I thank all of you who came here and read the post, I had nearly 3000 viewers in one night and so I’m really grateful and I hope you all stick around to see what I post and also for updates on my main website, which you can find at the top of this page.

Thanks for reading, leave comments as you wish and I’ll hopefully have holidays content to write here for you!!