Vaughan Rowsell

Using an all US Apple ID in NZ

March 13, 2012 at 4:39 pm In Getting Things Done, Rants, 8 Comments

OK so this post started as a “how to” on how to best setup all your iOS devices with ONE Apple ID in NZ, and still get access to all the goodness of the US app store. But before I even get started I fear this will turn into a rant about how stupid this situation is. Just wait, you will see.

Firstly, I have 2 Apple IDs.

A NZ App store Apple ID, registered to my NZ Visa. This lets me access a subset of music, video and apps on the App Store. There is some NZ only content that I can only access with this ID, but that is by far the minority.

A US App store Apple ID, setup to use vouchers that I buy when in the US. This lets me buy and rent ANYTHING from the US iTunes stores.

And so when I buy apps, I use my NZ ID as this is linked to my credit card, and I can buy freely without having to worry about how much credit I have on my iTunes account, and if I am going to run out of credit before I next go back to the US.

(wait for it)

When I rent movies and TV shows, I have to sign out and sign in to my US account and use this, because in NZ we haven’t been graced the privilege to PAY the media co’s our precious money to WATCH THIER STUFF. I knew it would get ranty. I will try and hold this in for a bit, so I can first actually give you my solution. Then we can talk about HOW STUPID THIS ALL IS.

So I have been living with two Apple IDs for ages, and at home we have no less than 9 Apple devices, a mix of laptops, iPads, iPods, Apple TVs and iPhones. Yes I pay my Apple tax. But to get my iTunes music (mostly BOUGHT from iTunes, the rest ripped from CD) to be shared across all devices and on my wife’s devices and use all the other apple services that all need to be linked to an Apple ID, it became clear that switching Apple IDs constantly was no longer going to work. Why? Because:

I FaceTime my kids and wife. So I need to link my FaceTime to an Apple ID.
I buy stuff on the app store
I buy music and video on iTunes
I subscribe to iTunes Match to sync all my stuff to my Apple TV and my Wife’s devices, so we don’t have to buy the same albums twice
I use iMessage
I use Home Sharing
I sync my iPhone wirelessly
And all the other things I am going to do with my Apple ID in the near future.

Managing all these services across multiple IDs is a NIGHTMARE.

So here is what I did.
NOTE: this will only work in NZ. If you are trying to do a similar thing in another market you will need to swap our the step on linking a credit card for a voucher as described here.

First, register as an Air NZ Airpoints customer. It’s a pain, and probably costs you money, so only really both with this whole thing if you fly Air NZ and want the air points.
https://www.onesmart.co.nz/ or http://www.airnewzealand.co.nz/joinairpoints
You will get a OneSmart card posted to you that is a credit card that can store multiple wallets in different currencies. If you are already an Airpoints customer, you will have been posted one of these already just before Christmas if you didn’t throw it in the trash.
It is actually a smart little card, and if I could link it to my BNZ EFTPOS chequing account it would be infinitely better reducing the cards in my wallet to two. My OneSmart and my drivers license.
You are welcome Air New Zealand.
Next link your OneSmart card to your internet banking and transfer some money onto it. The instructions are on the OneSmart site. It’s really easy.
Then convert that cash you just transferred into a US wallet when it clears. Follow your nose on the AirNZ OneSmart site.
Then create a US Apple ID (you can do this in any of the Apple App Stores or on iTunes), load your OneSmart card number as your credit card. It is a MasterCard!
NOTE: You will need to wait until the money you have transferred to the US wallet clears, as Apple with try to do an auth of $1 on the card to make sure it is valid and has money on it.
You will need to pick a US address also. Just make one up or look up a hotel in your favorite us CIty. I have an office in San Francisco, and I practically live there so I used that.
Once you have created your new Apple ID, change all your devices to use it. So the app stores, iTunes, Home Sharing, the lot. Much simpler.
Start buying stuff on iTunes and the App Store. All your apps, music and video magically syncs across all your devices. Heavenly. You US wallet will be debited.

Thats it. You will need to keep your OneSmart US wallet topped up regularly, and there is a $1 fee each time, plus the currency conversion is not the greatest but OK. Remember that the currency conversion happens when you transfer money to the US wallet, not as you spend it, so if there is a favorable exchange rate, load up the card! So not as convenient as using your NZ credit card to BUY STUFF. But almost as good.

If you have a whole lot of purchases on your old NZ Apple ID, there is no way you can transfer these to the US ID or to merge two Apple IDs. So for any app updates, you will need to switch over to the NZ Apple ID to do this on the App Store. Still a pain, but I can live with this.

And so finally, why the HELL do I have to do this, probably breaking copyright law to illegally purchase software, music and video along the way? This is just plane crazy, and it shouldn’t be this hard to give money to people.

CRAZY!

Taking a deep breath… perhaps I can download a movie to calm me down… and I will give some more money to THOSE MUPPETS IN HOLLYWOOD! Not the Jim Henson-Disney kind either.

New York, Chicago (and Ottawa)

January 15, 2012 at 5:22 pm In Life, stuff I like, Tourism, No Comments

I just had an amazing week travelling to NY, then Ottawa, then Chicago. Loved the snow, and the buzz of NYC. I would go back in a heartbeat.

Times Square

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Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are.

December 29, 2011 at 4:16 pm In Rants, 11 Comments

Firstly, I must make clear I have learned to love Telecom again over the last couple of years, they have rebuilt a brand that looked like it cared, and was customer focussed. I like their new MO for building an enduring brand that cares about their customers. Their new XT network kicks ass too. It’s hands down the best in town (and out on occasion). I love their XT network so much, I tell everyone to move to it at every opportunity, doubly so if they have a smartphone. I have moved all of our work mobiles to XT recently and slightly less recently I convinced my wife to move her phone too. She had bought a Samsung Galaxy recently and found coverage and data patchy on Vodafone. She didn’t really want to move as to her how the phone works it is all voodoo magic, and moving seemed to be a bit of a hassle. But she did and immediately found better coverage and better data. Yes! Another convert to Telecom.

To move her over she went to our local Telecom store, in Botany Town Centre, to get help with the move, and to make sure her phone would work as well as get the SIM, and see what discounts she could get as she was coming to Telecom with her own phone. To make sure her phone would work, the guy in the store told her to put a Telecom SIM in the phone to be 100% sure, but told Mel her Galaxy should work. So we grabbed a SIM, popped it in, and voila full bars and XT awesomeness. I had also checked on Telecom’s website to make 100% sure her Galaxy would support the XT network as it is very different to Vodafone’s. You can do this simply here by entering your IMEI number from under the battery in the phone. This will tell you if your model of phone will work on XT.

http://www.telecom.co.nz/mobile/mobile/ournetwork/phonecompatibility

And great news the model of the Galaxy Mel has is supported and works on all the right frequencies, but the website does also suggest popping in a SIM to be super sure. We did that, full bars, choice! So Mel moved across. She was given a credit on her account in exchange for a 12 month contract. No sweat, there was no way we would go back to Vodafone now.

So that was a few months ago. Since then she has had a few strange areas of patchiness on the network where my phone would work and her’s wouldn’t. I put that down to different aerials as hers was a Galaxy and mine an iPhone. Not all phones are equal.

So roll forward to today, well 3 days ago to be precise, when we rock out of town on holiday. We are sitting in Warkworth, one of the many places that kiwis live and play, and Mel asks me to look at her phone as she is getting bars but can’t make calls. Her phone says “Emergency calls only”. I fiddle, and find her phone can’t see the Telecom network at all, only Vodafone’s. Odd. I do some digging online while lounging around at the beach (on my XT phone) and learn that Telecom has two frequencies on their network. 2100mhz for high density areas like Auckland and a nationwide 850mhz network to cover everywhere else. Who knew? Mel’s particular Galaxy it seems can not connect to the 850mhz network, so Telecom is invisible to the phone when out of Auckland. And so I fiddled a bit more, and did some research on Geekzone and found that Mel’s phone just wont support the Telecom 850mhz network, which is the everywhere network, so without this the phone is only good for in the major centers. Unless we hack the phone, root it and upgrade the firmware or mod it which we weren’t going to do as this voids all sorts of warrantees for sure. Also Telecom wont support us if we did this.

And so feeling slightly jipped and confused, I got Mel to ring Telecom to make sure this was the case. The guy in the Telecom store who signed her up told her that her phone would be fine. We followed the instructions that Telecom gave us, and the tests all told us her phone would work, which was obvious as the SIM she put in the phone worked! Full bars, great coverage… until we left the city.

First person we speak to tries to help with some basic tests but still the same issue. I knew the problem was that the phone could not see the 850mhz network, so turning it off and on didn’t seem to make any difference. So Mel was escalated to 2nd tier support, and did some more tests and fiddling, and then they agree that it seems more complex, so Mel was put through to 3rd tier. We were relaxing at a bach and not too stressed at this stage as we were at 3rd tier support. They would be able to sort it or confirm if her phone just wont work. They hung up on us. So we ring back and ask to be put through to the 3rd tier support guys. We get put through to a dead line, just silence. Mel was going to hang up thinking she was disconnected again, but I told her to wait, incase it was just the hold music not working. Sure enough, after 20 or so minutes the hold music starts. Lucky she held on, and the hold music wasn’t that bad. We had Greg Johnson and Chris Knox to keep us company, which was good because we were on hold for another 2 and a half hours. The lady in the call centre who put us through came back to us every 15 minutes asking if we were happy to hold, we were, but eventually after the first hour she stopped asking us. So we waited and waited, read books, and waited some more. It was 9pm and we figured they were not going to come back to us at this stage so we hung up on them – Telecom’s website says technical support closes at 9pm. We would try them again in the morning.

Next day, we ring nice and early so we can get on with our day, and try desperately to get back the the 3rd tier support guys. Hopefully today they would answer their phone. Every time we rang 123 we get someone else who has a different idea about our situation. We had a fair few of them as it seems that even though Telecom is a telecommunications company they can’t actually work their phones themselves or their hold music so being hung up on was a frequent occurrence.

We finally talk to one person who seems to know a thing or two and suspects the same thing we do, that the Galaxy wont work out of major centres. Apparently the Galaxy S’s they sell have had modifications so they run on both Telecom networks and because we didn’t buy the phone from Telecom ours hasn’t had the necessary tweaks. They couldn’t confirm this officially, but told us it was up to us to make sure the phone worked before we signed. What!? We did. We went into a Telecom store, spoke to a Telecom sales person, followed Telecom’s advice and the phone worked! We were unaware that Telecom ran two networks and that all we were testing was that the phone would work in the city. There was very little she would or could do, other than suggest we buy a new Telecom handset that would work on both networks, cancel our contract and pay the $280 release fee, or take the phone back to Noel Leeming as they sold us the wrong phone. No they didn’t, we bought the phone before we were on Telecom. Pay a release fee? Seriously? Telecom signed us up to that contract under good faith that our phone would work. But according to Telecom, it wasn’t Telecom’s fault, and if it wasn’t Noel Leeming’s fault, then it was our fault for not testing the phone out of town. WTF! Really?

And so they refused to do anything, other than suggest we go back to the Botany Telecom store and take it up with them. We are out of town on holiday, so that was unlikely. So after some needling we get them to conference us into a call to the Botany store, so they can tell them what the issue is and get them to help us. We get cut off. There seems to be a theme here.

So we find the number for the Botany store and ring them direct. We repeat the whole story once more for good measure, and get once again what seems to be a standard response, being that it was up to us to make sure the phone worked and it wasn’t their fault. But didn’t they tell us the phone would be fine! Yes, but we should have somehow known that it was fine only on Telecom’s around town network. WTF Telecom? Are you serious?

More heated discussion, as you can imagine we are getting slightly pissed about the phone experience, if it is not the waiting on hold, getting cut off, having the buck passed, it is being told constantly that it is our fault. So they suggest we go to the closest Telecom store to us, being Silverdale which is still 30 mins drive from us but we can give them the phone, and they would do some tests on the phone and check the settings to see if they can get the phone to work. They told us that we could get the Silverdale store to ring them if necessary and they would explain the situation and see if we can get this resolved once and for all. They can put in a new SIM and see if it is a problem with the SIM. Okay, not sure what that will do, but Yay! Some action.

We go to the Silverdale Telecom store, feeling positive that we would get some resolution finally. Hopefully they can tweak the phone, or cancel the contract for us. We are desperate to get on with our holiday and put of a trip for the kids to Waiwera hot pools so we can get this sorted. We really just want a working phone at this stage, and if it means we have to go back to Vodafone then so be it. We just need the phone to work for us out of town. Two minutes in talking to the Telecom person about our problem at the store and then she launches into a defensive rant about how this happens a lot and we needed to be sure our phone worked before signing up. It is almost like she got this a lot, being in Silverdale where you need the 850mhz network.

Look here you morons, we did check, we did everything you asked us to. Then she types in the phone’s IMEI into her computer and then tells us the “system” tells her the phone may work some places but won’t work out of town. WTF!? Really, that’s not what the Telecom website told us, so I walk around the back of her desk and look her screen, and she is using the same fucken screen from the Telecom website I used, and it didn’t say “won’t work” at all, it said the same fucken thing it told us!

This device should work on the XT Mobile Network.

To confirm your device will work on the XT Mobile Network, please visit a Telecom store or dealer to try your device with a Telecom SIM.

She then refuses to put a new SIM in as she tells us she KNOWS that this phone won’t work because it is not the Telecom model. Only the phone bought from Telecom will work. How come she knows this and no one else in Telecom does!? We ask her to talk to the Botany store as they sent us here and they promised us that it would be sorted here. She refused to call them explaining that they are not an actual Telecom store, but are a Leading Edge Communications store. Therefore she wasn’t going to help as it was not their problem. After some more argument, she finally agrees to call the Botany store but assured us again that she can’t help because they aren’t actually Telecom. They just have a store that is 100% wall to wall branded as Telecom, sell only Telecom phones, wear telecom shirts, but they are not Telecom.

“Yes, ahuh, yeah they have a Galaxy that won’t work on Telecom, yes, I know, yes they should have checked first, ok I will tell them”.

Then she explains that Botany told her that, yes, the Galaxy wont work and we should have tested it before we signed up, and it is really our problem. They also said that this couldn’t be resolved in store and we would have to ring 123 or come into the Botany shop. Why on Earth would we have taken a couple of hours out of our holiday to go to a Telecom shop if we were not directed to do so. WHAT THE FUCK?

So at this stage, we have been on the phone for 6-7 hours, driven to a Telecom store under the advice of Telecom, to be told they flatly wont help us as they aren’t Telecom. And then the original Telecom store who sold us the contract, who sent us there, confirming that yes it was our problem all along and they weren’t going to help either. So we have royally been given the run around over three precious days on holiday. No one wants to help us. Not the call centre, not the technical support team, not the local Telecom store and not the original store that sold us the contract and who told us the phone will be fine.

At the same time as Mel is dealing with all this, I tweet @telecomnz on Twitter for help. All the other channels are failing us, so perhaps they can help. Richard who is the community manager on the Twitter team offers to put us in touch with the Customer Resolution team. Great, I love the sound of that team, they surely can resolve our issue. We just want to know if the phone can work, how to make it work or to release us from our contract. Help at last! Rachael from the Customer Resolution team gives us a call, after we pass on all the details of our problem in an email. She is helpful and sincere. She offered us $100 off a new smartphone. Nice offer, but it would still cost us $700 to get a new phone when we had not long ago spent that much on this phone. She told us we could sell our one on Trade Me. No thanks, that was going to be a big hassle and we didn’t want to shell out some cash at this time of year. It was late in the day, and she promised to call us back in the morning with a better resolution. Great.

Next day, Rachael calls back as she promised. Firstly she suggests we lied about trying a SIM in the phone first. They looked into the logs on our phone on the network and can’t see any other SIM ever being used in the phone. So if we didn’t test it then it is our fault. WHAT? We can’t remember what SIM we tested it in, perhaps it was the same fucken SIM that is STILL IN THE PHONE and THAT WORKED AS WE WALKED OUT OF THE STORE? She then suggests it is just patchy network reception and we are at the beach after all. She says this as she talks to Mel on MY Telecom phone. Mel’s phone is dead as a doornail anywhere north of Albany. It is not just the corner of the Bach she is standing in, it is the WHOLE NETWORK.

She also suggests we go back to Botany and take it up with them, and perhaps the guy there can fiddle with the phone and might be able to get it to work. No, we are on holiday and we need a phone to work, we are not going to drive for more than an hour back into Auckland to Botany, on the faint hope that they can fiddle with the phone and get it to work, when it seems clear to us that the phone will never work. And how would they guy in the Botany store know he has got it working on the 850mhz network when he is in Auckland on the 2100mhz network? After 3 days of headache and going in circles it seems simple to us that perhaps the best option is to release us from the contract and we can go back to Vodafone. Not ideal for us, but it makes the most sense. There will be a Vodafone store on our travels on holiday somewhere. No, Telecom won’t release us from the contract. Full-stop. Rachael then cites the terms and conditions of the contract and states that it is up to us to make sure our phone works on their network and that they don’t guarantee their network will work well everywhere – and that the area where we are holidaying is listed as an area of fair coverage, she doesn’t seem interested that the phone couldn’t pick up the network in Warkworth or Silverdale or ANYWHERE NORTH OF AUCKLAND either. So there is nothing she can do. We tell her we will cancel and move back to Vodafone, and she confirms we will be charged $280 early termination on our bill. We confirm that if they do we will take this up with small claims, the ombudsman, FairGo, whomever, and tell anyone else considering to move to Telecom, not to do so. Not because their network may or may not work for them, it probably will, it is a great network, I love it to bits. But because they royally fuck their customers over when things go wrong, and can’t seem to be able to put things right. Waiving the $280 seems like a small price to pay to get a customer, who uses Telecom for 7 other connections, back on side. Instead, it seems that no matter what, the customer is always WRONG.

Telecom actively courts moving your phone over to Telecom. Here is their latest offer for smartphones. The Samsung Galaxy is a smartphone.
http://www.telecom.co.nz/simoffer
When moving your phone over, Telecom’s advice is to use their online form to check your phones IMEI to see if it is compatible. Even their own internal staff use this form. The form said the phone should work, but check with a XT SIM in it to be sure.
We put in a XT SIM and it worked, which was obvious as we signed up the contract and have been using the phone in Auckland for five months without a problem.
The fact that the phone doesn’t work on the 850mhz network outside of the main centres is as far as Telecom is concerned the customers problem as customers really should have tested this themselves before signing.
How is the average consumer
1. expected to be aware that there are two networks (when most of the Telecom staff we spoke to weren’t themselves aware)
2. adequately be able to test their phone on both networks? How would a consumer know if they are on the 2100mhz or the 850mhz network at any particular time. It seems that this is in fact impossible for the average consumer to do.
It seems that a lot of the people we spoke to within Telecom actually knew all along our particular model of Samsung Galaxy wouldn’t work but didn’t make this information available to us upfront, instead confessed this to us as we were being buck-passed on to someone else.
Telecom value the $280 contract early termination fee over 6 of their staff members’ time, including 7 hours on the phone over 3 days, as well as valuing the $280 more than the three days of their customers precious lost time when they are on holiday.

And as no consolation whatsoever the final message I get from Telecom after I let them know I am cancelling our account is from Richard on Twitter who seemed to be the only person within Telecom actually wanting to help.

Below average advice seems to be the standard for Telecom at the moment. They appear as an organisation full of finger pointers and buck passers. Yes, Mel is pleased not to be having any more unhappy Telecom experiences.

My guess is Telecom get this a lot, but instead choose to baffle customers with confusing information, and frustrate them into buying Telecom phones. When what they really should do is make sure their customers phone work on their network before signing them up.

Boooo Telecom. You are still the shallow greedy telco that intentionally confuses consumers to your own benefit. Grow a soul.

Happy times

January 17, 2011 at 11:41 am In Life, 4 Comments

I have been quiet for a while as I put my head down on my latest work projects. Things are rocketing along and going pretty damn well, but the last 12 months have been anything but a walk in the park.

My mother, my mum, the inspiration for my NZ long bike ride in 2009, passed away in October. It was unexpected and heartbreaking. I spent half the year sitting beside her in hospitals, unbeknownst to me at the time, watching her slip away. The doctors all told us she would be home by Xmas.

Mum was one of these special people who touched so many. At her funeral people were spilling out the door. We underestimated just how many people needed to say goodbye to someone very special to them too.

So I had an idea last night looking through old photos, as I am so busy with life and work at the moment, and I am pretty poor at blogging these days, that I should at least take the time now and then to post a happy photo of something from the last few years to share it, and hopefully make someone else happy. That’s the sort of thing that Mum would have liked.

And so, upon reflection about Mum’s passing, and as I started writing this post , I looked at life and the things I might not be so proud of, or might not have made Mum so proud. The one thing that pained Mum, every single time I would walk into her kitchen she would say “When are you going to stop working so hard, you are going to kill yourself you know, you should slow down and enjoy like, smell the flowers…” and so on usually for the next five minutes, and I would nod and say “soon, soon Mum soon”.

Working hard is just what I do for some reason, I can’t help it, and right up until a few minutes ago, as my fingers started tapping the keyboard, as I thought about this post and if I could spare 10 minutes to write this now, I could hear Mum’s words and see her disappointed glances in her kitchen (which would quickly turn into warm smiles) and I berated myself yet again that I never took the time to slow down for Mum. I should have been more like her, kind giving and always doing things for others as she always did. But then I realised something. I work hard because that’s exactly what she did.

Mum was a solo parent, raising three boys, in a wheelchair. She did everything for us, she never stopped. We were always broke, Mum didn’t have ACC to fall back on, we had to get by on an invalids benefit and she fought for every cent of it to get us kids fed, through school and where possible making sure we never went without. She had super human strength, and she never let her wheelchair stop her.

In the 80′s Mum took out a series of bank loans to buy us a computer. Actually not just one but a Spectrum, a Sega, then a C64, followed by a series of PCs, unheard of at the time, and her friends and neighbours thought she was mad. Why was this woman on benefit buying crazy expensive computers? Well us boys lived on them, when we weren’t climbing trees, playing with fireworks, and getting into trouble with the law (ssshh) we were punching in hex games from a magazine, and saving them to cassette. We were writing programs, dialing up BBS sites till 3am on our 2400 baud modem. We were dreaming of the possibilities of what we could do. We were learning a trade that would see us set up well for the next century. She worked hard to pay those loans back and to make sure we didn’t miss out.

I don’t slow down because she didn’t. I always push myself because I wanted to make her proud and to show her all her hard work and her investment in us was not wasted. She was proud. You don’t usually learn how proud your parents are until you lose them, going through all her boxes, full of things from your past that she kept as momentos, from report cards, to newspaper clippings, to a lock of hair. She was so proud, she just wanted me to be happy more than anything else.

Even though Mum worked so hard raising us boys, and making sure we had everything, what Mum could do was take the time to smell the roses too. She was always one for a laugh, a glass of wine and lending a hand. I have only just realised that Mum wasn’t telling me to stop. She was telling me to slow down now and then.

I am not superstitious or overly spiritual but I think Mum is still there somewhere not necessarily ”out there” but more “inside”. I am my mother’s son, and I will work hard to make sure the people I love don’t miss out. But my girls will be their father’s daughters, and as Mum showed me how to work hard, but find the time to slow down now and then, I need to start learning how I can do the same for my girls, show them how to live a good and happy life. Work hard for the things and people you love, but find the time to sit back now and then and take it easy. When they walk into my kitchen in 20 years time, I don’t want to feel like too much of a hypocrite when I berate them for not smelling the roses.

And so, here it is. One of many happy photos to remind me to smell some roses now and then.

The girls hanging out at Granny's

Dynamically resize an iframe depending on it’s content

June 9, 2010 at 1:36 pm In Web, Work, 1 Comment

A while back I figured out a neat trick to enable you to resize an iframe embedded on someone else’s page depending on the size of it’s contents.

The problem is this.

You have a widget that you want other people to be able to embed in the pages of their website, and you want to use an iframe to do this. However the content of the iframe widget is dynamic, and the size of it can vary, depending on the content. You want the iframe/widget to resize itself to suit the content.

Problem. There is NO way to resize an iframe of your content embedded on someone else’s page from WITHIN the iframe content itself. No amount of JavaScript or clever twiddling in the page served up in the iframe will allow you to do this. By design browsers wont let content from another domain affect the parent container. It is far too insecure, this referred to as same origin policy. If you are serving up content in the iframe from the same domain as the parent page, then you can just use JavaScript to do this.

Only the parent container can resize the iframe. So seeing as the parent container is someone else’s page that you have no control over, how do you make it aware of the content in the iframe and tell it how to resize the iframe?

Solution. You can do this simply by serving up a dynamic style sheet with the iframe code used to embed your widget. This style sheet (CSS) served up by the same server as the widget content, and it knows what the dynamic content is in the iframe and can figure out how big the iframe needs to be. This CSS file therefore needs to be a dynamically generated file, as it will need to do some server side calculations to figure out what the dimensions are.

Here is an example of the widget code you would supply.

The style sheet will need to use some server side code to output the correct dimensions for the iframe element style. Here is an example for dynamically generating this style.

<?php

$domId = $_GET["dom_id"]; //This is the dom element ID of the iframe to generate the style for
$content_id = $_GET["content_id"]; //This the unique identifier for the content being generated by the widget/iframe

/**

Using the $content_id, do some magic here to determine what the content is (customer details, list of products, photos etc), and calculate the height etc. This is simple for things like a list of items where the height of the elements is fixed, but the number is variable. If the widget is a combination of things that are dependent on font size, width of elements, white-space wrapping etc, it can get a little tricky, but in the end it is all just math.

**/

$elementHeight = $x * $y + 100; //This is just an example.

/* STYLE SHEET STARTS HERE */

#<?php echo $domId;?>
{
height: <?php echo $elementHeight;?>px;
overflow: hidden;
scroll: none;
}

That’s it. Nice and simple-ish. Only tricky if the content of the iframe wildly varies.

http://vaughan-vendhq.vendhq.com/

VendHQ Pitch Video for Cloud Connect Launch Pad

February 11, 2010 at 7:58 am In e-commerce, Getting Things Done, stuff I like, 2 Comments

VendHQ has been picked as one of 8 semifinalist for the Cloud Connect Launch Pad, and we plan on getting it to the finals. VendHQ is one of my projects I am chipping away at. I write the code, design the screens, develop the strategy, put together the demo videos and make the coffee.

Check out the video and VOTE for VendHQ using this link http://launchpad.cloudconnectevent.com/vote-now/ and help a kiwi company get to the finals.

Yes I do the voice overs too

Tourism Futures 2050

February 3, 2010 at 9:11 am In Rants, Tourism, Web, Work, No Comments

I was privileged to be invited along to participate on the NZ Tourism 2050 Future Maker project and workshop to discuss themes and issues that NZ will face in the next 40 years. I was in the unfortunate position to be a technologist trying to predict trends 40 years out. Lucky me. I pick… tele-porters… and Mars tourism? 40 years is an eternity. I don’t think 40 years ago my parents thought their grandchildren would be tweeting and FaceBooking from things called iPhones.

Interestingly there were two strong themes that came up time and time again in the discussions. They were quite different but I saw them to be critically intertwined.

The first issue is the broad one of technology, and everything got lumped in together in this one from the social web, mobile payments, augmented reality, connectivity and mobile information tools. The one thing everyone agreed is that technology is changing the way people interact and make decisions when they travel. Interestingly one of the greatest fears/opportunities was the power of social networks, social communication and viral ideas. I say this is both a fear and an opportunity as clearly the affect can be either positive or negative.

The other top issue was on of our image as 100% pure, clean and green and preserving this and leveraging more off our natural beauty in a world where the environment is going to hell in a handbasket.

Why are these intertwined? Well once upon a time you used the glossiest of brochure with the most stunning of photos promising the best experiences in all your tourism marketing, and then hoped, when the traveller arrives, to deliver on the experience. Today there is a fear of social media within tourism, and I don’t expect this is limited to NZ tourism operators. What if we say we are 100% pure and the world discovers we are not quite 100%, perhaps only 85%, but worse, tweets, blogs and tells all their friends and followers. What if someone has a bad time? What if the next viral thing is a video of a bad experience or image that breaks the illusion of our 100% clean and green image. This image is our marketing capital.

The reality is with more and more people using their social web connections as their primary source of information, this image could be damaged if we as a whole can not live up to what we are promising. Driven from the Auckland Airport into the city before? Been discussing high intensity beef farming lately? Shipped any coal to china lately? Okay you cant expect everything to be 100% squeaky clean and I don’t think that our 100% pure image is so misleading that an angry internet mob will develop and something viral will spread tarnishing our image and turning the world off of visiting our shores. Of course New Zealand is a beautiful and amazing place. Some of our less cellubrious “scenes” are so so. But today is there is a risk of painting a perfect image to sells plane tickets and beds, and have people picking on all the bad images around NZ that are in direct contrast and have this influence the way they talk about and describe New Zealand socially? Like I say if expectations are consistently not met, there will be negative comments and these will turn off others. Nothing has changed here, it is the age old power of word of mouth, it is just that technology allows people to share this information more readily.

So forgetting the 100% pure image for now, this marketing campaign has worked well for us for so long but it may be up for an overhaul soon. The pervasiveness of technology in our lives today and the ability for people to enable others to vicariously share their experiences means that whatever our strategy is, we have to be somewhat genuine in how we promote anything online, whether it is NZ as a whole, a bed and breakfast, or a scenic walk. But don’t fear being caught out for not living up to expectations (I think it is in our national psyche to underrate ourselves) but even better than that focus on making sure the traveller gets the best experience they can possibly have and then enable them to use the social web to do all the good marketing for you. You can’t control what people say, but you sure can positively influence it.

So one asset we have got is our natural beauty. Another asset is our people. Nobody is more passionate about New Zealand than New Zealanders. What if we connected travellers to New Zealand with kiwis online? What if we got kiwis to describe places in blog posts. Share trip ideas “If you are coming to Auckland then you NEED to do …”. Share their own views, photos or videos of their New Zealand. This would create an opportunity for travellers to see NZ through our eyes before they come.

What if tourism operators participated in FourSquare, new checkins today get a complimentary coffee with breakfast, 10% off a bungee. What if we really engaged as a country with visitors online socially? No not just a FaceBook page, something smarter and engaging. Travel is all about seeing new things and meeting new people, and sharing the experience with others. We can make it easier for visitors to connect both with New Zealanders and their own friends back home.

We need to find ways to enable all the organizations tasked with promoting New Zealand as a whole, or particular districts, to engage with travelers online and encourage them to share their experiences while they are here and still on the buzz of jumping off a bridge with a bungee around their ankles. Let them tell the world NZ is 100% cool, 100% awesome, 100% the best country they have ever visited, in their own words. Enable people to have genuine positive conversations. The technology is there so what’s the hold up?

The first barrier, as I talk about above, is the willingness of the tourism industry to engage, but I think we can overcome that. There is a second major barrier. We need to find ways to let tourists connect online while they travel without crippling data roaming costs or oppressive WIFI fees. Right now tourists don’t often tweet, and post up photos on the go while they are actually feeling the buzz because to do so would make them broke. Free or cheap ubiquitous WIFI is unheard of. We need to make it easier for travellers to remain connected while they are here.

Here are some ideas:

Telecom/Vodafone partner with Tourism NZ to offer tourist SIMs with prepaid data and calls. Sure you can do this now but it is not at the front of a travellers mind to have to go out of their way to source a prepaid SIM for their phone. These should be on sale at the airport and at the reception of their accommodation packaged up in deals specially for tourists. It should be cheap and accessible.
A partnership with a national WIFI network. What if Tomizone was packaged up to tourists and gave the traveller special online discounts for accommodation and activities only available through the Tomizone network? There is benefit for all there.
The i-SITEs. What is their future? Well one thing to make them more valid is to offer free WIFI for travellers. Perhaps even serve drinks and evolve into a travellers meeting place.
At the very least accommodation providers need to offer their WIFI for free.

I think the fear of bad exposure through social media is not 100% justified. NZ really is a great destination (not that I am biased or anything) and for the most part I am sure everyone has an awesome time. The real fear, I believe, is that we are not able to capitalize off of the power of the social web. If we fear that people will say bad things to their friends then will will only discover that yes some people say bad things. But what if we could facilitate travellers to share all their great comments and experiences? One thing is for sure, a country our size and with our marketing budget, we need to maximize any opportunity the Internet and technology provides. Pioneering an integrated approach of new technology and social media into our national tourism strategy may not be a bad start.

First review of the iTablet/iSlate

January 27, 2010 at 6:57 am In Uncategorized, No Comments

OK, so I haven’t posted for ages, I’ve been busy! But excitingly I have just been contacted by my close personal friend Walt Mossberg and he shared with me the first review of the iSlate/iTablet/iThingamegiggy. Wow, enjoy! I for one am looking forward to the unicorn arriving through my door with my favorite pizza.

One for Movember(tm) again

November 6, 2009 at 12:59 pm In Uncategorized, No Comments

I seem to be getting a few hits today from people obviously looking for this post from last year. It must be Movember… :})

I can summon things with my mustache!

http://www.philintheblanks.com/comics/manenough.html

Is augmented reality really a reality – Barcamp Auckland notes

July 12, 2009 at 11:07 am In stuff I like, No Comments

Yesterday I did a brief presentation on augmented reality (AR) at Barcamp Auckland. Having no internet connection, and no mini DVI connector for a VGA projector, I kinda had to roll with it and talked more and showed less visuals apart from a few vids. Here are some notes from my original presentation and some links to videos for more info.

As you can appreciate this is a big topic, but I just wanted to touch on the basics for the 30 minute talk. I am no expert in AR but I think there is a huge opportunity for businesses or individuals to enter this space today and be at the top of the curve.

Augmented reality is part way along the spectrum towards virtual reality. VR is where you experience a fully digital or synthesised environment, whereas AR is where you take a real environment and overlay digital data and imagery to enhance the scene. The most typical example of this is the heads up display in a fighter jet. Airspeed, altitude, pitch, and bad guys are all highlighted in the line of view of the pilot.

There are three most common types of AR that I will cover:

Projection AR
Windowed AR
Retinal display

Projection AR

This is where you utilise a camera and projector to interact with your environment. The camera to observe, and the projector to display overlay information.

This type or AR is currently in use in vehicles to project driving information and directions onto the windscreen so it appears in the line of view of the driver.

See this video of the BMW HUD (mind the music).

Here is a fantastic presentation by the MIT team about their wearable AR projector

This style of AR is good for interactions with environments where you have canvases that are close to you. This would not work obviously when wanting to interact with a mountain, a building across the road and so on.

Retinal Projection

This is where using some eye-wear, with built in camera and micro projection device, projects additional information augmenting the scene directly onto the retina. Think of this as your own personal HUD, that can give you directions as you walk, alert you to new messages, identifying objects and providing detailed information about them.

The best example of this is as seen in the movie Terminator.

Windowed AR – What you can do today

This style of AR is where you use a intermediary device as your window onto a real scene. Think of it as a looking glass. This could be a mobile phone, or portable video device. The device views the scene as you would, and renders it on a screen. It can then overlay digital information on top.

This is the most exciting form of AR for me at the moment as this is relatively easy to achieve using the latest styles of mobile phones, like the iPhone 3GS, Android G1 and G2. Here is what you need to achieve basic AR information overlays on a mobile phone.

Video

You will need a decent video camera within in the device to view and a screen to render the scene.

GPS

The phone needs to know WHERE it is. Consumer GPS can get fairly accurate within a 10 meter area.

Compass

A digital compass to determine which way the phone is pointing.

Accelerometer

What angle is the phone looking at. Is it looking down, up, slightly on an angle?

Combining these things together you get a pretty accurate position as to what the device is looking at. The accuracy has quite some variance, so this works quite well when dealing with large outdoor scenes where the objects are large, for example a tourism application where you might be walking through downtown Auckland or Rome and looking at landmarks, or for real estate where you are covering a suburb and providing property information from the roadside.

Image recognition

A powerful extension to AR is the inclusion of image and shape recognition. By adding this to position, direction and angle, you enable the device to recognise “things” in the scene. These could be features of the landscape, peoples faces, buildings, or objects in a room. This increases the accuracy of AR considerably, but adds complexity by needing to develop algorithms to process realtime video and identify objects. Currently mobile devices are a little underpowered to allow for this but there are some exciting developments underway, and on the next generation devices this will be even more of a reality.

The most common example of image recog today are where a printed patteren or fiduciary marker is used to let the device identify a canvas in the scene. The device then overlays onto or replaces the marker with some digital information. There are examples of this where a 3D object is superimposed onto the scene and the perspective of the object matches the angle and direction viewed by the devices.

This example is a virtual pet for the iPhone

This is a concept game by NVidia using their new GPU chip-set for mobile devices.

Killer Apps

Tourism – A virtual guide, that can identify when you are near a point of interest and provide visual and or audio information about it. A point and identify tool, to get information of landmarks.

Real Estate – Roadside guide to property that guides you from house to house, and provides detailed information from the curb.

Engineering – An app to allow field engineers to easily find buried cables, pipes, or even just a power meter.

What else?? The exciting thing is there are hundreds or applications yet to be discovered.