One of the things that has perplexed me about the iPhone for a very long time is the price differential between the iPod Touch and the outright purchase price of the iPhone. How does adding a 3G radio and GPS receiver more than double the price of the device? I believe that the answer lies in Apple's historic desire to steer iPhone buyers towards two year contracts with the official iPhone carriers, and make a mockery of anyone who chooses to go contract-free.

Fortunately for future i (read the entire post)...

Hone Harawera's nemesis will inevitably be destined to join Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson to go down in history as one of the great polarising figures in New Zealand politics. The former reserve bank governor, turned corned beef eating bachelor, turned politician, was always bound to be a controversial figure as evidenced by state television's insistence on pitting him against Hone Harawera in a cheap attempt to sure up ratings, but there are two characteristics of Don Brash that members of (read the entire post)...

This morning I have put aside a couple of hours to try out the new personal product from Xero, which is currently being provided and marketed by BNZ. On the whole it's a slick and attractive offering that is easy to configure and provides useful information for those wanting to get a clearer picture of their spending habits. Unfortunately there are a couple of notable deficiencies which leave a black mark on what is otherwise a pretty complete package.

Firstly, when I enter the spendi (read the entire post)...

Now that the dust has settled there are two major new features that have stuck in my mind from this week's iPod product launch event. One of those is the hotly anticipated camera, and the other is FM radio. Curiously both of these have been added to the Nano, but neither has been added to the Touch.

The esteemed leader of the Mac cult has been widely reported as stating that these new features were omitted from the new Touch in order to drive down prices and hence make it more access (read the entire post)...

I have no doubt that most of us, myself included, believe that technological progress is a good thing but it does come with some negative side effects. Those negative consequences have, in three key areas, become very apparent to me over the last couple of years due to their 'dumbing down' effect.
Let me being by looking at music. When the compact disc was introduced we realised that its audio reproduction quality may be limited by the resolution of the digital media but we accepted (read the entire post)...