As of June 26th 2009, the iPhone 3GS was released. Telstra now offer iPhones (the new or old model) on the original plans, but you can now sign up to the Cap plans. Comparing these plans at the $80 per month spend level shows:

Note: For data usage you need to pay an additional cost per month if you don’t want to incur AUD$2 per Megabyte of data. This is the same for iPhone or Cap plan, so I wont compare these in this post.

As can be seen from the above data, the original iPhone plan versus the NextG Cap plans now offered on the iPhone differ significantly. Discounting the flag-fall:

• With the iPhone plan you get 259 minutes of talking time, roughly 4.3 hours.
• With the Cap plan you get 608 minutes of talking time, roughly 10 hours. (Not including the extra $100 credit to Telstra Mobiles).

Hopefully you can see now why the Cap plans are better value. What does one do in this situation? One would think that you could call billing, change plans to a practically exactly the same priced plan – and change over.

With the hope of a changeover, I called billing. I wouldn’t mind taking the hit of having to sign up for 24 months again, and I learned that this would be required – BUT – and there is always a but with Telstra, this wasn’t all. If I wanted to change my iPhone plan to a Cap Plan I would have to agree to the following:

1. Sign up to the Next G cap plan for a full 24 months again
2. Pay out my current plan (in other words pay off the iPhone)

Paying off the current plan would cost me $850 upfront, or $70 per month for the next year.

Telstra – where is the incentive to keep customers. This is not a way to show it. Had you allowed a plan change to one now offered to newcomers to the iPhone on your network, I’d still be a paying customer for another 2 years (an additional year on top of my current obligation). Money grabbing to “pay out” my current plan and THEN signing up to a full new contract is a customer loyalty killer. Next G speed and coverage be damned.

This update is compatible with the iPhone 3.0 Firmware, so many people were hoping that Push notification would be included. It has not been, so the functionality of Skype on the iPhone is limited. Apple does not allow Applications to run in the background, so one can’t receive calls or message notifications in Skype without the app continuously running. The moment you jump out to the iPod, Contacts, Phone or any other part of your iPhone OS, Skype quits.

Without push notifications V1.1 of the Skype App for iPhone remains a novelty for Skype users, and only mildly useful for “away from the desktop” users who need to make a call over wifi.

I used to use Tweetdeck, until Tweetie came out for the Mac (a native client). However on any other non-apple platform I recommend Tweetdeck or DestroyTwitter (both Adobe Air apps) to my friends.

In the last 24 hours Kevin Rose, of Digg fame, blogged about getting hold of the Tweetdeck beta. Since then the blogosphere has gone mad about it. Mashable reports that the app is now live in the Apple appstore.

You can get it for free from the App Store.

This particular H1N1 strain has not circulated previously in humans. The virus is entirely new.
The virus is contagious, spreading easily from one person to another, and from one country to another.
As of today, nearly 30,000 confirmed cases have been reported in 74 countries.
… I have therefore decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to phase 6. The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic.
… On present evidence, the overwhelming majority of patients experience mild symptoms and make a rapid and full recovery, often in the absence of any form of medical treatment. Worldwide, the number of deaths is small. Each and every one of these deaths is tragic, and we have to brace ourselves to see more. However, we do not expect to see a sudden and dramatic jump in the number of severe or fatal infections.
… Most cases of severe and fatal infections have been in adults between the ages of 30 and 50 years.
This pattern is significantly different from that seen during epidemics of seasonal influenza, when most deaths occur in frail elderly people. … At the same time, it is important to note that around one third to half of the severe and fatal infections are occurring in previously healthy young and middle-aged people.

Read more details in the World Health Organisation press release.

This is also a timely reminder to people who work in office spaces about coughing/sneezing not into your hands, but the best cloth at hand. Two years ago at the start of the Flu season in Australia I blogged about the benefits of using your sleeves for catching germs. I’ll re-iterate this again with this comic but well done video:

The WHO has more details on the H1N1 strain of the Flu. There are also details on the current severity of this strain.

• 32GB Option
• 3 Megapixel camera with autofocus
• Video Recording capabilities with upload to Youtube function
• Voice Control
• Compass

The other new features coming to the iPhone such as:

• Cut, Copy & Paste (about time!)
• MMS and contact send/receive via SMS
• Bluetooth transfer and A2DP support
• Data tethering to your laptop (USB or Bluetooth)
• Spotlight Search
• Landscape keyboard across all apps
• Voice Memos

will be available on the current iPhone 3G, the iPhone 2G and included oin the new 3GS. A free software upgrade to Version 3.0 of the firmware will be ready for download to the public June the 17th.

For the die-hard Apple fanboys, a Quicktime stream of the keynote speech given by Phil Schiller is now online.

I just read on Brandon Sanderson’s blog that David Eddings, the author of some fantastic fantasy books, has recently passed away.

I started reading fantasy novels early on in high school. After reading the Lord of the Rings, the Belgariad series by David Eddings were instrumental in forming my enjoyment of this genre of books.

Unfortunately I lent my Belgariad series to someone and never got them back. I also never finished the Mallorean. It’s high time to raise your glasses to David (and his co-author/wife Leigh) for a story that started many of us on our journey of a lifetime.

Time to buy a new set of the Belgariad and after 21 years re-read them.

Downloading MySQL and installing on Leopard is a breeze with the native package.

I migrated my database (dump/restore) and recreated my wordpress user, but still kept getting this error:

Error establishing a database connection

The user could log into the database from the console as shown:

lantrix@lexx:~ $ mysql -u wordpress -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 19
Server version: 5.1.34 MySQL Community Server (GPL)
 
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
 
mysql> use wordpress;
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A
 
Database changed
mysql> show tables;
+-----------------------------+
| Tables_in_wordpress         |
+-----------------------------+
| sk2_blacklist               | 

So what is the problem?

Google provides an answer, with a log lived post from My Macinations providing the solution. It’s all to do with correcting your php.ini with the proper MySQL socket location.

Now, back to testing my new version of the Twitter Tags wordpress plugin. #hashtags now work!

Have you ever found that a filesystem is filling up fast, and dont know what is causing it? This one liner (which can be placed in a cron job if you like) is best run as a super user.

It will:

1. Search for all files in the current dir and subdirs that are modified in the last 3 days;
2. list them, filtering just the filesize and name/path;
3. sort/order by the largest file; and
4. Email you a copy of the report.

find / -type f -mtime -3 -exec ls -l {} \; 2>/dev/null \
| awk '{print $5 " " $9}' \
| awk '{printf "%12d\t%s\n", $1, substr($0,index($0,$2),80)}' \
| sort -r >/tmp/largefiles.txt && \
( uuencode /tmp/largefiles.txt largefiles.txt ) \
| mailx -s 'Large Files Report' -r mail2@youremail.com `cat /tmp/mailrecipients` &

Nice. If you just want to see the response on stdout then try this:

find / -type f -mtime -3 -exec ls -l {} \; 2>/dev/null \
| awk '{print $5 " " $9}' \
| awk '{printf "%12d\t%s\n", $1, substr($0,index($0,$2),80)}' \
| sort -r

Have fun.

Since Skype Version 3.8.0.188 (Release date: November 19, 2008) and all later versions (including Skype 4 Betas as at Jan. 2009) the software Philips supply no longer works with Skype and the VOIP321 phone.

The latest VOIP321 driver from their website suffers the same issue, even though it states “The VOIP321 USB Phone Driver V 3.8.3 which can be downloaded from Philips web site is compatible with Skype software version from V2.0.0.x until V3.8.0.x”. This is plainly no longer correct with the latest stable release of Skype, V3.8.0.188.

Skype developers are unable to do anything about it as they see it being a Philips driver problem. Phillips wont update their driver (Quoting support staff “… no more development/fixes are being incorporated into the VOIP321.EXE file”).

The solution to getting this beast working again:

• Uninstall Skype 3.8.0.188 (or later non-working version)
• Visit the Old Apps website where you can (without support from Skype) download a previous version and use it.
• I found that Skype 3.8.0.154 3.8.0.139 worked fine for me with the VOIP321 hardware under Windows XP
• Reinstall the older version.
• Launch the newly installed older version of Skype
• Remove the VOIP321.exe application from the Skype menu: Tools > Options > Advanced > Advanced Settings > Manage other programs Access to Skype
• Reboot your Windows Computer

If you don’t own one of these yet, don’t waste your time on Philips Skype phone devices. Their driver support is lacking when Skype is updated and they EOL their product too soon. You buy a product for a few hundred dollars and it becomes useless 12 months later. Phillips would probably rather sell you a newer bit of hardware.

Should they update their driver at this point I will be the first to commend them. I forgot to mention: Phillips Skype phones (where your PC is required) are Windows Only. No Mac or Linux support or drivers are offered.

My next purchase will be a wifi or wired ethernet Skype phone, and not Philips.