Friday, 30 June 2023
A free, public domain database of Australian post codes and geo data, collated from public sources and the community.
XLS, XLSX, JSON, CSV, XML.
Includes Long/Lat and over 18,000 entries.
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Saturday, 22 January 2022
A free, public domain database of New ZZealand post codes and geo data, collated from public sources and the community.
XLS, XLSX, JSON, CSV, XML.
Includes Longitude and Latitude values.
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Saturday, 28 August 2021
Downloadable world cities databases.
Includes latitude, longitude, province, country and and more.
CSV Format.
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Wednesday, 16 November 2016
Useful SQL tips - how to list all stored procedures or tables updated recently
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Friday, 16 September 2016
Useful SQL tips - how to a specific type of field in a SQL table
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Saturday, 16 July 2016
Useful SQL tips - how to list the SQL Recovery Model of all your databases
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Monday, 16 May 2016
Useful SQL tips - How to list all your SQL databases with their file locations and sizes
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Wednesday, 16 March 2016
Useful SQL tips - how to list all stored procedures that have column names that match a keyword
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Saturday, 16 January 2016
Useful SQL tips - how to list all tables that have column names that match a keyword
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Thursday, 24 December 2015
A deep dive tutorial on how to add Audio, Video and Conferencing capabilities into your web site or application, using JavaScript and the Skype Web SDK.
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Saturday, 12 December 2015
Useful SQL tips - how to list all tables and retrieve their row counts and file sizes
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Wednesday, 18 November 2015
Sometimes it's handy to be able to easily extract a list of email addresses from your Outlook PST or OST file.
This application uses C# to extract email addresses from Microsoft Outlook.
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Tuesday, 27 October 2015
There's no easy way to export a list of contacts from the Lync or Skype for Business desktop client, but this can be achieved using the Skype Web SDK.
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Friday, 16 October 2015
My personal mailbox, with emails going back to the late 90's, is full of old attachments that bloat the PST file, but aren't really needed.
I decided to write a simple C# console app to extract them to reduce the size of my PST file.
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Wednesday, 16 September 2015
I've updated my Lync and Skype for Business Presence Dashboard application to improve usability, look & feel and add a few new options.
The dashboard is open-source and available for download.
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Tuesday, 1 September 2015
Pick a customer, a vendor or a friend that you call regularly.
Now put their email address into your favourite unified communications client, such as Skype, Lync or Facebook Messenger, and the likelihood is you’ll never spend a cent on calling them on your telephone again.
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Friday, 24 July 2015
Learn about the new Skype Web SDK, how it works, how to starting use it, and how the SDK can help enhance your web site or application with Skype functionality.
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Monday, 13 July 2015
I’ve recently been accepted as a Pluralsight Author, and am busily creating the first of a series of courses on how to develop Skype-enabled applications using the Skype Web SDK.
Pluralsight require a high level of audio and production quality (as they should!), and as such I embarked upon a mission to upgrade my recording equipment to as close to studio standards as I can reasonably justify with minimal budget.
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Saturday, 16 May 2015
The Skype Web SDK is a powerful new framework built upon UCWA that allows you to rapidly build Skype-enabled applications and functionality.
In this tutorial, learn how to build a Presence Dashboard to display your contacts and their availability status in real time.
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Thursday, 30 April 2015
Developing applications with the Skype Web SDK has never been easier with the tools released today by Microsoft at the Build 2015 conference.
The Skype Web SDK is a new set of JavaScript components and HTML controls that enable developers to build new web experiences that seamlessly integrate a wide variety of real-time collaboration models leveraging Skype for Business services and the larger Skype network.
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Saturday, 4 April 2015
As crazy as it sounds, we set off again in March 2015 to fundraise for the Telco Together Foundation by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro - this time the Lemosho Route.
All funds raised go directly to the Foundation's worthy recipients - Second Bite, Inspire, Red Dust Role Models & Sports Without Borders.
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Monday, 30 March 2015
Our final day of adventure, leaving Millenium Camp for Mweka Gate and the return to civilisation (and showers!)
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Sunday, 29 March 2015
After struggling to reach the summit only a few hours earlier, we begin our descent down the southern face of Kilimanjaro
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Sunday, 29 March 2015
Tonight at midnight, we begin our ascent to the peak of Kilimanjaro, Uruhu Peak at an altitude of 5,895m.
It will take us around 8 hours to complete the climb.
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Sunday, 29 March 2015
Starting with breakfast at 11pm, we begin the most surreal and challenging stage of our adventure.
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Saturday, 28 March 2015
With Kilimanjaro towering above us like a giant in the mist, we steadily ascend towards School Hut camp, ready for our breakfast later that night.
.
.
:)
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Friday, 27 March 2015
A relatively easy, although suprisingly long day of trekking around the northern face of Kilimanjaro, a stone's throw to the Kenyan border.
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Thursday, 26 March 2015
Slowly we continue our climb higher each day, across the rocky plains and edge of Shira Plateau towards Moir Hut camp.
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Wednesday, 25 March 2015
Leaving the sounds of the forrest and the cool of the gigantic trees above us, we reach the grasslands on our way towards the next camp.
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Saturday, 21 March 2015
In a little over 48hrs we begin our climb of the world's largest freestanding mountain, Kilimanjaro, in the northern plains of Tanzania, Africa.
All to raise funds for the Telco Together Foundation!
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Monday, 16 March 2015
In my travels I collect lots of links to pages about Microsoft Lync and Skype for Business.
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Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Don't you just hate it when you stumble over a feature in Visual Studio that's been available for years, and realise that it could have saved you many hours of coding?
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Wednesday, 11 February 2015
A presentation and discussion about various Lync and Skype for Business development frameworks (UCMA, UCWA, Skype API, 3rd party) and how they can be used as a pathway to implementing IoT (Internet of Things) communication to Lync and Skype users.
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Sunday, 1 February 2015
A few small tricks and techniques for improving your UCWA application and user experience.
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Saturday, 31 January 2015
UCWA can be used to dynamically control the presence of an online Lync account.
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Friday, 30 January 2015
UCWA, or the Unified Communications Web API, lets your send IMs easily using a simple HTTP RESTful API hosted on your Lync environment.
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Thursday, 29 January 2015
The first step when creating a new UCWA is to initialise an Application - a two way modality between your Lync user account and an intended recipient.
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Wednesday, 28 January 2015
Learn some of the important prerequisites for installing and configuring UCWA on your Lync 2013 environment.
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Tuesday, 27 January 2015
Microsoft Unified Communications Web API (UCWA) is a REST API that exposes Lync Server 2013 Instant Messaging and Presence capabilities.
This tutorial series explains how to use UCWA to send a simple Instant Message (IM)
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Monday, 12 January 2015
The Lemosho Route is widely considered to be the best route on Mount Kilimanjaro.
Lemosho, a relatively new route, is favoured due to its beauty, remoteness and success rate.
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Tuesday, 6 January 2015
Today, most people think of Lync and Skype as tools for Unified Communications – Instant Messaging, Audio and Video conferencing, Application Sharing and in some instances telephony solutions.
Lync (and soon Skype for Business, the next version of Lync) can also be used as the end-point for receiving and processing a wide range of modalities, including Instant Messaging.
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Tuesday, 16 December 2014
An overview of building a Windows Phone 8 Silverlight Game using XAML, C# and Visual Studio 2013.
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Tuesday, 11 November 2014
Microsoft have announced a significant update to the Lync product range, including rebranding the product as Skype for Business, bringing it closer to final convergence with the Skype platform and direction.
The changes are slated for the first half of 2015.
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Saturday, 25 October 2014
Lync Agent DNS Checker is a very simple tool to remotely test DNS records against those required for Lync 2013, Lync Online, Exchange 2013 and/or Office 365.
The tool uses a number of external DNS servers (Google, Microsoft, and others) to remotely query a domain name, to ensure accurate results.
Lync Agent DNS Checker is an informational tool – no registration or advertisements, and has just one single function.
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Friday, 24 October 2014
More than 150,000 administrators rely on PRTG Network Monitor every day to monitor their LANs, WANs, servers, websites, appliances, URLs, and more - now they can easily send notifications via Lync using Lync Agent.
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Saturday, 12 July 2014
Ok, maybe not only Zork for Lync specifically, but a Z-Machine interpreter for Microsoft s Lync platform.
But first, a little history Back in the 1970 s, Joel Berez and Mark Blanc created the Z-Machine, the virtual machine used by games company Infocom to deliver its text adventure games, such as Zork, Planetfall and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
These types of games are known as Interactive Fiction, simulated environments in which players use text commands to control their characters as the game plays out.
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Monday, 19 May 2014
It seems that almost every day, somebody asks me which is better Lync Online / Office 365 or a cloud-based hosted version.
Obviously Lync Online and Office 365 are cloud-based solutions, but they are built for the masses primarily the SMB/SME market.
They are online, low-cost, turnkey solutions, but lack a number of key features that are important to many businesses.
Capability and Feature DifferencesWhilst fundamentally the same product, there are a number of significant differences between a hosted implementation of Lync, and that offered by Office 365.
These differences are also valid for On-Premises installations of Lync Server 2013.
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Saturday, 1 March 2014
(also known as Monitoring Lync with Open Source Tools)Microsoft s Lync Server 2013 includes a number of reporting options, however they are server-focused and don t lend themselves well to external queries.
Many network telecommunications providers and technology organisations use MRTG and RRD to monitor key aspects of their networks, devices and environments.
In fact, I use MRTG and RRD to monitor all aspects of our infrastructure, from Hypervisor metrics (CPU, RAM, HDD, etc.
), individual guest virtual machine metrics, and network infrastructure devices such as our routers, firewalls, load balancers and various other appliances.
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Sunday, 22 December 2013
Adventure in Post-Nuclear AmericaJust on a week ago, inXile Entertainment released a beta of their upcoming game, Wasteland 2 – the long awaited (25 years!).
The original was a post-apocalyptic role-playing video game developed by Interplay, and released in 1988 for the Apple ][, PC and Commodore 64.
The game is set in an alternate history timeline, mirroring that of the original classic game, in which a nuclear holocaust has decimated the planet, reverting society into one of primitive technology and anarchy.
On the day of the cataclysm, a company of U.
S.
Army Engineers were in a remote desolate desert building bridges.
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Sunday, 15 December 2013
Re-posted from Microsoft Case Studies By moving to Windows Server we've saved around 80% on licensing costs and dramatically reduced provisioning times for new virtual machines.
Matthew Proctor, General Manager Data Centre & Cloud, Primus TelecomBusiness NeedsWith the advent of cloud computing, Primus Telecom found itself dramatically transitioning toward cloud technology.
We began building a cloud environment in the mid 2000s and launched our cloud services formally in 2008 with the acquisition of bespoke Managed Services Provider Imagineering Technology, recounts Matthew Proctor, General Manager of Data Centre & Cloud at Primus Telecom.
Our customer base grew faster than we anticipated so we started to expand our offering.
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Thursday, 14 November 2013
In the last two years, I have developed a few applications and one game for Windows Phone 7.
5, primarily as a hobby and for my own entertainment.
My last application, Bolo8, deploys fine on Windows Phone 8, but I found online and documented resources at the time difficult to navigate, so learning the new platform was less than simple.
Jamro’s new book, Windows Phone 8 Game Development offers readers a great introduction to Windows Phone development, using the MVVM methodologies, a concept that both logical and appropriate, but unusually absent in other publications.
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Sunday, 10 November 2013
Using a Garmin Forerunner 210, I tracked my recent trip to Kilimanjaro.
The battery died a few hundred metres from Uhuru Peak, but the files below show the Rongai Route and our trip up the mountain in October 2013![Download Google KML Files]GPS Data Set on Google Earth
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Monday, 4 November 2013
Jambo! At around 9am on 28th October 2013, with a team of excited but exhausted adventurers, we successfully reached Uhuru Peak, the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, Africa s highest point, and the world s highest free-standing mountain.
My journey begin only 8 months earlier, at a resort in Phuket, Thailand.
The opportunity to participate in the Telco Together Foundation s Kilimanjaro Charity Challenge was presented to me, and with some hesitation I accepted the challenge.
Sometimes in life, one needs a catalyst for change.
In my role as a telecommunications executive, software developer, writer and geek, the vast majority of my day is spent at a desk or standing between rows of racks in one of my Data Centres.
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Sunday, 20 October 2013
After around 20hrs of flying, and half that again in various airports, we finally arrive at our destination – Arusha, Tanzania.
A city of contrasts, stark poverty and lack of basic services combined with what I can easily say are some of the most happy, cheerful and friendly people I’ve met.
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Tuesday, 25 June 2013
Speaking more and more both as part of my job with M2, as well as guest panelist or presenter at various technology events, there are a number of online resources out there to help solidify the process in your mind.
I’m not by any means a confident speaker, but both John Papa and Scott Hanselman’s tutorials are a great resource, and I wholeheartedly recommending spending a few dollars to support their efforts and learn from their experience.
Want to be a better public speaker?Perhaps you’ve given speeches at work and are considering a local user group.
Maybe you’ve spoken at code camps and want to go national or international.
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Tuesday, 18 June 2013
Or how I went from 29 minutes to 12 minutes…Every step becomes a little easier, the more you climb and the more you focus.
Back in February, after learning of the Kilimanjaro Charity Challenge, I decided it was time to get fit, if nothing else but to keep up with my colleagues and achieve this challenge.
And so, like a professional I sought the wise and trusted advice of my colleagues in the industry, many of whom suggested the 1,000 steps in Ferntree Gully.
As this near my home, it seemed like a great idea.
I can do them in around 10 minutes! , responded one, who shall remain nameless.
Her level of fitness was extreme compared to mine, but it seemed achievable.
I think we d need to put aside an hour or so , was another response.
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Monday, 22 April 2013
Kilimanjaro Charity Challenge – Our Causes - tTelco Together has a vision to harness the reach and capability of the telecommunications industry to support Australian communities in need.
Through our Community Partners, your donation will directly contribute to :HOMELESSNESSProviding meals to the homelessEvery day one in 200 Australians are homeless, and don t know where their next meal is coming from.
Meanwhile, Australians waste $5.
2 billion of food per year.
Telco Together is helping to redistribute the food to those in need by supporting Secondbite.
MENTAL HEALTHSupporting people with mental health issues.
One in five Australians will suffer from a mental illness during their lifetime.
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Friday, 12 April 2013
In October 2013, a team of adventure seekers from the telecommunications industry will set off to climb the world’s tallest freestanding mountain – Mount Kilimanjaro – to raise money for disadvantaged communities in Australia.
Kilimanjaro is the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, one of the highest volcanoes and Africa s highest mountain, reaching 5,895m (~19,340ft).
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Saturday, 19 January 2013
As I travel quite frequently, managing my person mail on a legacy POP3/IMAP based mail server has always proven to be frustrating and inefficient.
Long are the days I ve dreamed of not having to use the dreaded leave on server option, and having to wait for all my various devices to download the same messages over and over again.
After investigating a few alternatives, including VMware s Zimbra appliance, a number of mail servers that poorly implement the IMAP protocol, it became clear that Microsoft s Exchange platform was actually surprisingly cost effective and feature rich.
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Saturday, 25 August 2012
Anecdotally it is common to hear, within the telecommunications industry, that telephone call volumes decrease during hot days, colloquially when everyone goes outside to the beach!Naturally, where temperatures are lower, it is believed that consumers and business people are more likely to remain in the homes or place or work, resulting in more telephone calls being made.
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Sunday, 12 August 2012
I don't often (ever) write about books that I have read, but this particular book is so unexpectedly inspiring that I feel the need to spread the word about this amazing girl, her family, and the abilities that are discovered in the most unlikely place.
Snippets of news, the occasional reference in a scientific journal, science blog or technology podcast led me to learn more about Carly Fleischmann, primarily out of curiosity, and partly due to a disbelief of what I had heard.
That a young autistic girl without the ability to speak or communicate, had suddenly opened the eyes of her family, carers and friends by communicating electronically.
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Sunday, 5 August 2012
Today I found myself writing code to review the validity of the many, err, dozens of domain names that I oversee.
I wanted to incorporate this into my personal intranet site, written in ASP.
NET using the 4.
5RC framework.
The task was to validate whether a domain name was correctly delegated, with valid A records pointing at one or more of my web servers, or externally hosted servers.
Using the system.
net assembly to query a domain record is relatively trivial, but using it to query external name server delegation proved to be somewhat cumbersome, so I decided to simply use Window’s built in nslookup tool, available since Windows 2000 (and maybe earlier!).
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Thursday, 19 July 2012
I recently spent a few weeks in North America attending conferences and technology workshops.
Throughout this time I recorded, periodically, the performance I was receiving on various free or venue-provided WiFi networks.
These measurements were made by monitoring a sustained FTP download from a server located in a Texas Data Centre, 150Mbps in size, and excluding any pauses due to drop outs (which were reasonably frequent).
I have excluded latency from these figures as it varied quite dramatically, possibly due to transient periodical usage on WiFi networks by ‘normal’ users.
City/LocationProviderSpeedLAXT-Mobile4.
1Delta LAX-JFKDelta Airlines1.
1Manhattan, NYUnknown4.
2Acela Train – NY-DCT-Mobile2.
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Thursday, 22 March 2012
Primus Australia becomes first retail service provider to receive B2B interoperability certification from NBN Co Melbourne, Australia: Primus Australia, a part of PTGi (Primus Telecommunications Group, Inc.
– NYSE:PTGi) has today announced that it is the first retail service provider (RSP) to receive NBN Co s business-to-business (B2B) interoperability certification.
Primus Australia will now utilise NBN Co s B2B Gateway for direct systems integration, supporting automated order management, assurance and billing operations for services provided on the NBN to end user customers.
Primus Australia will be the first RSP in Australia to provide the real time provisioning of services to customers on the NBN network.
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Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Today we announced that we have been included in the Federal Government’s Data Centre Facilities panel! This is an exciting opportunity, and many thanks to my team who have helped secure this membership!A huge thanks to Bruce, Jason and Emily for their work on this! Oh, and to Zac for knowing how to use a printer…— Press Release Follows —MELBOURNE 16th November 2011: Primus Australia, a part of PTGi (Primus Telecommunications Group, Inc.
)(NYSE: PTGi), today announced it is now on the Federal Government’s Data Centre Facilities Panel, offering services from its Melbourne facilities.
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Sunday, 17 July 2011
Before it closed for renovations in August, I was lucky enough to stay at the bohemian, boutique Hotel Chelsea, on West 22rd Street in Manhattan.
Officially there for business meetings, I had a chance to check out the priceless art that hangs on the walls throughout the hotel.
The Hotel Chelsea, also known as the Chelsea Hotel, or simply the Chelsea, is a historic New York City hotel and landmark, known primarily for its history of notable residents.
The hotel has been the home of numerous writers, musicians, artists, and actors, including Bob Dylan, Virgil Thomson, Charles Bukowski, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Jobriath, and Larry Rivers.
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Friday, 8 July 2011
STS-135 was the 135th and final mission of the American Space Shuttle program.
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Friday, 16 April 2010
An exciting new chapter is opening in Porsche Motorsport history, with the launch of the 918 Spyder plug-in hybrid concept car.
Launched last month at the Geneva motor show, the Spyder is a mid-engined, two-seater supercar with performance exceeding most F1 cars and efficiency greater than a Toyota Prius!The exciting stats – 0-100km/h in under 3.
2 seconds, top speed 320km/h, emissions of less than 70g CO2 per km and fuel consumption of around 3.
0L/100km (my Boxster averages around 9…)The 2010 Porsche 918 Spyder combines classic Porsche elements and futuristic design.
More to come in the coming weeks…
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Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Remember Space Paranoids from the original (and hopefully new!) TRON movie? Released as a promotional game for the upcoming Tron Legacy movie…http://www.
spaceparanoidsonline.
com/
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Saturday, 6 September 2008
Imagineering Technology - Data Centre, Cloud and Web Hosting Provider
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Monday, 12 March 2007
From: Exinda Networks“The Imagineering data center runs multiple 100 Mbps.
backbone feeds today with Gigabit speeds planned for mid 2007.
Only the Exinda High Performance series allows us to monitor and optimize our enterprise customers’ server farms and our overall data center operations at up to 500 Mbps.
performance levels, while removing the congestion off selected WAN segments and accelerating applications at the same time,” commented Matthew Proctor, chief executive officer of Imagineering Technologies.
“Scalability, full WAN acceleration functionality and excellent monitoring made the decision to go with the x800HP a no-brainer for us.
Exinda delivered what others could not,” concluded Proctor.
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Tuesday, 7 June 2005
There is still plenty of ‘cool factor’ technology filtering through to the enterprise space, savvy CIOs just have to pick the studs from the duds.
Virtual shift Commercial data centres are getting excited.
Matthew Proctor, managing director of Imagineering Technologies, which operates a medium-scale data centre in Melbourne, says the shift towards virtualised data centres is inevitable.
VMWare, which was acquired by storage vendor EMC last year, is facing stiff competition from one other vendor: Microsoft.
The software giant gobbled up virtual machine outfit Connectix two years ago, and the improvements to VMWare’s products have seen Microsoft get more aggressive in its sales push.
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Thursday, 26 February 2004
By Patrick Gray, ZDNet Australia 26 February 2004 The Web sites of Virgin Blue and Jetstar airlines are offline after a “special offer” triggered a buying frenzy that is believed to have overloaded the companies’ Web servers.
Jetstar, the new low-cost airline owned by Qantas, announced it would sell 100,000 seats from 6am today at a one-way price of AU$29 as a special introductory offer.
The airline is due to start flying in May.
Virgin Blue countered, announcing that it would match the AU$29 fare, but would offer 200,000 seats.
Eager travellers have apparently jumped on the offers — both Web-sites have simply disappeared.
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Wednesday, 11 June 2003
Written by Patrick Gray, ZDNetSoaring professional indemnity and public liability insurance costs have sparked outrage among IT contractors, employers and employment agencies.
Managing director of Melbourne based Imagineering Technologies is feeling the impact already.
“It has had a major financial impact… it’s something that we need to either absorb or pass on to our clients.
It’s an unacceptable situation,” he said.
Proctor cannot understand why the insurance industry is stepping up premiums when market conditions haven’t changed.
“I don’t believe the IT industry in its current state has changed greatly over the last three to four years,” he said.
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