·:[ Leefe rates the world… ]:·
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It was interesting to read Nick Miller’s article (SMH, 30 May 207) about TiVo being introduced to Australia in partnership with Seven Network*. ‘Time-shift’ free to air digital TV.

But you need to know need to know when all the TV shows are on to record them for playback at a different time. And not all TV channels seem to be happy to supply an electronic version of the program.

The TiVo requires a full electronic programming guide (EPG) to work properly. However the Nine Network is very protective of its program guide, recently suing IceTV, the provider of another EPG claiming it had breached copyright by reproducing the channel’s program line-up.

Ironically if you are are a Digital TV subscriber, via Foxtel or Optus, you get an electronic TV guide for channel Nine, but not for Seven or Ten. (ABC and SBS have a TV guide.)

The article states that the networks “support the concept of an industry-wide EPG“. But what about in practice? Are they going to share their programming info, or are they too protective of it?

* Planned for release in 2008.

Do you like boxes on your web sites that are square or with rounded corners? They look smoother with rounded corners don’t they? More like buttons.

Well CSS3 is adding a rounded corners property, but it is still not yet ratified. Some browsers have preliminary support for the draft standard, but not all of them.

Mozilla/Firefox includes support using the prefix ‘-moz-’. And it works as described.

I have seem mention that Safari supports the border-radius property. Some sites say use a prefix of ‘-webkit-’ and others ‘-khtml-’. Unfortunately I can’t keen to get either to work in Safari 2.0.4. I think it might only work on nightly builds, that is demo versions.

And according to this MSDN blog post Internet Explorer 7 does not support the property, and will not till it is official. Thought it does include a tutorial for achieving the look using tables and images.

So you can do fancy rounded corners in CSS if you want to, but only people using Mozilla or Firefox will get the benefit of them.

Reading a post Death By Lawyer: 10 Cool Sites We Miss and was interested to find Pandora listed there.

Had been using Pandora for a while. Nice project that creates virtual radio stations based on your tastes in music. But it seems that has all gone done the tube for non-USA Internet citizens.

Previously Pandora only asked users to enter a US ZIP code to verify that they were US citizens. (I wonder how many users had a Wikipedia ZIP code?) As of a few days ago Pandora has been forced to filter by IP address. So now when you try to use the service you get a Pandora restricted page.

I am sorry to see this service go, and the Pandora people are sorry as well.

• Pandora: Breaking Pandora’s Heart… (3 May 2007)
• Pandora: Canada (14 May 2007)

Walking through Newtown tonight there was a large crowd gathered around a band of buskers under the “I have a dream” mural in King st.

Two on drums, two guitars and two saxophone players. Well done with a good feel to the music. The crowed enjoyed the music, and blocked the foot path

Pitty I only had a camera phone to capture the moment.

The Australian government site put up to host the “Do not call” list, to allow Australians to opt out of being called by market research and most of the other people that call you*, has been so overwhelmed by people wanting to register that it has been unavailable. I suppose this shows that there has been a big interest in not being called, or the government grossly underestimated the demand for the site.

The do not call site can be found, when working, at: www.donotcall.gov.au

*Some organisations are exempt from the do not call laws, namely political organisations and charities (if I remember correctly).

References

• Crunch time for Do Not Call site (SMH, 3 May 2007)
• Do Not Call registry overloaded by huge public response (Computerworld, 3 May 2007)

(Follow up to Newtown IGA is no more…)

I visited the ‘new’ store tonight. The new opening hours sign is up, and the times are the same.

The supermarket in Newtown was once a Franklins, but when Woolworths bought the chain in 2001 it divested its interest in some of the stores[1]. The ACCC ruling[2] says “To promote competition, Woolworths is required to divest its stores at the following locations“, which included Newtown.

So if Woolworths bought Frinklins how has is Newtown IGA becoming a Franklins?

Well it seems that when Dairy Farm was getting out of the supermarket business it didn’t sell all the stores to Woolworths. Some of the Franklins stores in NSW, and the name, got sold to Pick ‘n Pay[3, 5]. Who retained the name and what remained of the chain.

So it appears that the owners of the supermarket in Newtown have swapped franchise, from IGA to Franklins. As far as I can tell all the staff are the same, and the store hasn’t been dramatically rearranged, just rebadged.

References

1. Woolworths’ Acquisition Of Franklins Stores (10 July 2001)
2. ACCC Gets Legally-Enforceable Undertakings From Dairy Farm, Franklins and Woolworths (7 June 2001)
3. Franklins - About Us
4. Franklins risks takeover bid: analyst (SMH, 24 April 2007)
5. Franklins - Wikipedia