TiVO Coming to Australia

Announced in a Sydney Morning Herald article this morning -

Seven’s long-awaited TiVo digital television recorder will go on sale in Australia next month, priced at $700.

The TiVo digital recorder has been a HUGE hit in the USA and I expect that the same will be the case here. The difference in Australia is that the TiVo box will be sold as an outright purchase as opposed to the subscription model they have in the USA.

TiVO will you to record all the free-to-air television channels (eg. ABC, Seven, Nine, Ten, SBS and their digital add-ons) using a built-in program guide.  It will also provide access about 100 free internet video channels.

It will be interesting to see Foxtel’s response ….

Just off the wire

Well for New Zealanders the title of this post could be “just off the fibre” … but not for us Australians.

Marc Lehmann just posted the following on Twitter -

NZ has announced fibre to the home. Meanwhile our Telco’s sell DVDs via snail mail. I like the vision NZ has gained recently.

I agree with Marc about liking the direction that NZ is heading with many things and this “fibre to the home” project is  a nice piece of icing on the cake.

Back when I was working at Telstra there were discussions and trials about fibre to the home.  That was 15 YEARS AGO!!!

It’s time to start jumping on our telcos and governments and demanding more.  Fibre-to-the-home could make a big difference to the way people access your business.

Power Outage Puts Pressure on Big Name Service Providers

San Francisco was gripped by a major power outage today (Tuesday afternoon USA time / Wednesday morning Australian Eastern time).  There would have been many people complaining about lack of access to air conditioners, lights and lifts but the power problems have had a huge effect on many small businesses worldwide.

For the people who have a Typepad hosted blog you will find that you web presence is timing out and your domain is just giving an error to anyone looking for your site.  An email has been sent out to all users advising that they are working flat out to get services rectified but that won’t help if you rely on your Typepad service as your main web presence.

Other major internet business also were effected including Technorati, CNet, Craigslist, and Linden Labs (Second Life).

It’s not just me – Googe?

Just went to do a search on google.com.au and thought the nice graphic in honour of Valentine’s Day was missing something. Yep – it’s missing its “L”. Initially I thought it was just the Google guys in Australia but apparantly its global.

Either chocolate covered strawberries takes away your ability to spell or it is an interesting piece of new branding.

Hanging Up the Boots in a Big Way

40% of the workforce will be elligble for retirement in the next 3-5 years !! WOW!!

This doesn’t mean that they all will retire, but more than likely with boomers (and this is the age group that is being spoken of) it will be a new and different type of retirement.

Do you know what impact this will have on your industry, your clients and your business? Worth a bit of planning me thinks.