”

SYDNEY (Dow Jones)--Australian Treasurer Peter Costello said the nation will completely

eliminate government net debt Friday, labeling April 21 as "debt free day".

"It is a day we pay off the mortgage," Costello said in a speech to the

Committee for Economic Development of Australia.

“

I am thinking about holding a wee blog sweepstake on how long it will be before the IMF has to bail out the French Welfare state.... any takers?

Rod is SUPER excited because his new Smackberry has some great new features... like..

• Bluetooth
• Handsfree
• Phone Buttons
• A Calculator

I mean come on! Really? WOW!My nanna had those on her Sony t610 about 4 years ago.

My shiny new(ish- it's a few monthsold now) iMate SP5 has

• WiFi... yes real 802.1 WiFi. That way I don't pay $30/MB while roaming the world.
• A Megapixel Camera which is great for using with servces like Scanr
• A media player that happily plays all the nice content off my 1GB mini SD card- oh... it syncs with my Media Center to so I can get my news straight onto my phone.
• A web browser- with frames and Javascript support.
• Smack down yo' Smackberry ass whoopin development environment called the Compact Framework that lets me take all my desktop/server dev skills and apply them to the mobile world. If my device doesn't have a *sexy* calculator... I can write one...
• A DIRECT push connection to my Exchange server. (Oh... and it works if you run Small Business Server too!)
• A look that is more 'suave urbane clubber' than 'oh lord I wish I hadn't spilt that soup down my tie in house counsel'

Who's laughing now Rod!!!!

Anyway. You can see Rod and myself discussing future technology in software and other great things at CodeCamp this weekend... Look forward to seeing you all there.

In a former life (when I actually had a life) I used to pay quite a bit of dance music off records such that the tracks blended togther really nicely*. I played at a few big outh Island parties including Main Stage on NYE @ Alpine Unity...

Anyway... time dictates I'm not doing as much of this any more. As a result I have kinda lost touch with the deep dark vibe that used to drive me. Fear not though as I have discovered www.mixdepot.net which is basically a site for aspiring DJs. It seems to be frequented by a large number of fantastic Progressive House DJs (among other genres) and a lot of them are Ableton Live types which means the mixing is utterly flawles and the mastering is tight as... well, let's just say it's TIGHT!

So I've downloaded a few of the mixes from here already and they are REALLY rather good.

Currently listening to: V - Train / M357 and I highly recommend the download. A number of the trackas are available as Bit Torrents so if any of you Citylinkers are keen for a 100 megabit torrent-a-thon let me know.

*Yes... I know this is called 'DJing' but it's just so cliche to say 'I was a DJ'...

Looked at my mobile bill last month and there was a $64 10 minute call from Aus to NZ......

Yes... that is like $6 per minute.... from Australia!

Turns out my phone had decided to roam on Optus instead of Vodafone for that call.

While AU-NZ on Vodafone AUS is $.49/min making the same call on Optus or Telstra is a mind numbing $6 odd per minute!.

Moral of the story is work out how to show the carrier name on your mobile... and make sure you look before you leap!

Just organised a car with Avis- I'm in BNE for the day next Thursday. Not only were they about 30% cheaper than Budget, my usual rental place, but once I completed the booking they had a link to download a vCal... that just ROCKS- that's what I call trying harder

I'll be a happy repeat customer from here on in!

Ok.. sone under NDA I've known about the Desktop availability of SQl mobile for quite a while.

It was announced in the wild this week. Steve Lasker has a great Q&A on his blog...

http://blogs.msdn.com/stevelasker/archive/2006/04/10/SqlEverywhereInfo.aspx

”

Media company CanWest MediaWorks (NZ) Ltd. (MWL.NZ) said Friday

it has reached an agreement with two other broadcasting networks to deliver free-to-air

satellite-based digital television services in New Zealand.

The New Zealand-based company, which is 70% owned by Canada's largest media group

CanWest Global Communications Corp. (CWG), said it has agreed with Broadcast

Communications Ltd. and Television New Zealand to negotiate the installation of a full

transponder on the Optus D1 satellite.

“

I read a great article over summer in NZ Fitness magazine called something like “Is Gym the New Religion”... basically talking about how for broadly secular NZ going to gym is becoming the place where we socialise and 'worship' these days....

Of course in the USA it's all a bit different as Casey points out.

“my home gym is a YMCA, and they are getting all god'ed up for spring”

W00t!.....

Buy Apple stock now!

This is great news!
Get the goodies here:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/apr/05bootcamp.html