The new government data sets are released on the Friday evening, then it’s a competitive event where teams form to think up new ideas to use the data. Over the weekend there are great talks on visualisation and mapping. The teams bunker-down at the conference, or go home to finish off their developments. Then they are presented on Sunday by the (tired) developers and awards are presented. The whole experience is about learning, collaboration, inventiveness and fun.

I thought of a project to develop called “PictureSwipe”, an iPad application that searches and browses the photo collection. After a weekend of hacking, I had a working prototype. This movie above is a short demo of the prototype.

 PictureSwipe Project Page (GovHack)

The 4Big is a RAID unit with 4x1TB disks, and configured as RAID5 yields storage of 3TB. It's been reliable for a year or more, and has travelled 5000km with me on my treks.

After purchasing and attempting recovery with Diskwarrior and TechTool Pro, both failed to see the disk. My next step was a disk recovery service that knew about RAID and Mac volumes, and enquiries led to quotes up to $2500. Yikes!

But then I came across R-Studio for Mac, another piece of data recovery software.  I downloaded the demo, and hey PRESTO, it could see the disk and all the files, and a recovery test worked fine. So $79 later I'm here recovering from a near disaster.  Going to the backups for so much data would have been weeks of effort.

Hope this helps someone else out there.

The Internet Industry Association has asked me to explore how the NBN rollout is going, and how well the concept of super-fast broadband is understood around Australia. A decade ago I was the IIA Ambassador studying the digital divide and how to overcome the lack of internet connectivity across Australia. Ten years on many of the same issues exist.

I've recently visited some of the initial NBN sites in Armidale and Coffs Harbour, and now I'm in Tasmania for the CSIRO Broadband Society conference next week.  While I'm here I'll be interviewing people from all areas of Australian society starting in the NBN first-release sites of Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point.

I'm excited by the prospects for innovative applications, it's a breath of fresh air to be moving out of the Telstra/Govt stalemate we've endured for the last 20 years.

So it's time to follow up my ambitions by contacting my colleagues around the industry.  I've received favourable feedback from a tentative plan to become the Internet Industry Association's Ambassador again, spreading the good news about how broadband can change our society. And there seem to be some interesting roles at NBNco to investigate.

I found out recently that my 2001 Tech Trek website has been archived by the National Library here.  As Ambassador for the IIA the Tech Trek was a superb project at communicating the benefits of the then nascent broadband. It's possible a similar role may open for me on the NBN benefits.

Aussie boldly goes on hi-tech trek
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1848625.stm>
Sunday, 3 March, 2002, 07:45 GMT

Roaming Australia aboard a wireless bus
<http://www.zdnet.com.au/roaming-australia-aboard-a-wireless-bus-120237977.htm>
 July 11th, 2001

It's great to see rigorous debate about the NBN in the press EVERY DAY!  In the past it's been terribly difficult to raise issues and have them understood by mainstream media. The problem now is that while super-fast broadband is in the news there are a multitude of mis-informed commenters swaying the debate with inaccuracies.

No home, living from day to day, going for jobs, learning, trying to go up not give up.

The RiotACT discussion after his posting has drawn lots of professional and community help toward the problem in Canberra. A great demonstration of how a simple blog can foster critical communication and action among a community.

I came across the Books For All project in Canberra. They accept donated books so the best of my recent collection (six boxes!) was enthusiastically received by Tammy and Ben at the Griffin Centre.

George
Book Fan