Telstra to block Gmail, starts idiot campaign

April 15th, 2007 • computing, email, idiocy, spam

According to The Inquirer, Telstra are starting to block all email from Gmail because of spam originating from the network. On the upside, having dealt with a ton of Telstra customers at my current job, I hear Telstra were a bunch of dolts before this. Having dealt with their customer service, I can confirm it. But that’s a tangent.

Telstra are set to block the world 3rd largest email provider because they’re too ignorant to implement proper spam filters on their network infrastructure. Gmail sending out spam is nothing new and before them, Yahoo! and Hotmail have been doing it for years with Hotmail being one of the worst free email solutions I’ve ever had the displeasure of using. Welcome to the 21st century, Telstra. Every free email service known to man can have spam sent to and from it without any intervention from the provider. With spam techniques changing almost daily, this will never stop until there’s something to supplant and replace our current — and pathetic — mail infrastructure as a whole. I receive spam from Gmail on my own Gmail accounts but this doesn’t make me implement filters to stop it, I understand that it happens and I don’t see why Telstra should be any different. All big email providers end up on blacklists from time to time and that’s the nature of email so why doesn’t Telstra implement the various RBLs in place that are widely used by everyone else is certainly beyond my feeble understanding.

But it seems Telstra are in the forefront of spam technology along with Verizon: block entire services. It’s my assumption that this is the wave of the future and will stop all spam immediately. This will ultimately stop all that direct spam, backscatter spam, sender domain/envelope spoofed spam and all that Cialis spam that we all love. Actions like this will require no need for innovation in spam blocking techniques or appliances because soon enough, Telstra customers will only be able to receive emails from Telstra/Bigpond customers so they’ll know it’s all legit.

I applaud you, Telstra, for your mighty foresight and innovation in keeping your network “usable” for your customers. You should get awards.

The beautiful Motion Computing medical tablet

March 27th, 2007 • computing, tablets

Approximately three years ago, at my former job, we got a fancy new toy: a Motion Computing tablet PC. It was the first tablet I’d ever seen and was arguably one of the first tablet-only tablets on the market. It was very lightweight, had a clean front bezel and human interface and I saw a lot of applications for it. Since I was at a University, the possibilities only boggled my mind because I knew we’d soon be ordering a million of them for all the teachers. Unfortunately that never happened and we only kept the one tablet for whatever reason which was soon relinquished back to the IT Department for re-deployment after the user got a fancy new IBM X60 tablet (which later was replaced by a monster Macbook Pro).

I was always envious of this tablet because of its sheer simplicity and value-add for the product itself. In foresight, I knew it’d hit vertical markets such as warehousing and inventorying with a swiftness, which it did. One thing I had always waited to see was its application in the medical field because frankly, it could easily replace stale old paper notes and information that stays with the doctor or the patient in their room. Now, Motion Computing has finally released their Medical tablet and it’s gorgeous looking. The ergonomics and form factor truly fit in with someone in a hospital having to lug it around whereas they used to cling between the breast and forearm and now they can just carry it like a shiny white tote. It looks like they’ve taken some of the ruggedness and durability from their industrial outings and put it to good use with the C5 Medical Tablet (see rubberized handle) and make excellent use of rounded corners to avoid any snagging on clothing or equipment.

I know I could never afford one of these things but I’d sure love to get my hands on one just to see how well they designed the UI for medical use.