Have you noticed how lately we’re seeing a slow increasing number of advertisements appearing from Australia Post these days? Last night was about the third night in a row that I saw an Australian Post TV commercial in a news break. This is something that has come to my attention and it honestly saddens me as large as this to need to start advertising.

In my opinion it seems that in this day and age Australia Post has now found an entity that shares common ground; the Internet. When was the last time you sat down to write a handwritten letter to let some of your relatives/distant friends know how things are going in your life? What’s the chance you you could see someone’s grandparent practicing this activity in relation to a young person? Zero? Currently in today’s modern world it seems as though people find themselves attached to their email, Facebook or MySpace account for sending all their humble human messages instead of the more "real" feeling of a letter.

It’s very sad that we all have to see the slow and subtle disappearance of out beloved of old Australia Post but it also means that people today are going to need to morph their ways of thinking to show a way of appreciation to their family and friends instead of a letter. I’m looking forward to find out what ways this may be accomplished in the future and I hope you will too.

Session 1 – Care to Care about Speed

The header image of The PHP Benchmark

This informative information session by Chris Vincent explored the idea that unless you have proof about how fast your code really is, you don’t know what your talking about. His program is a prime example of how wrong a lot of code snippets are

Links

• PHP Benchmark
• The old PHP Benchmark

Session 2 – Silverlight Deep Zoom Demonstration

Presenter: John O’Brien

The ideology of Silverlight Deep Zoom is that…

• Instead of having a static gallery of photos, have an interactive one
• Your able to send a file that is initially small, but if your wanting to get more information / photos related, you can zoom in and download more information
• Cut down the the code behind an image gallery and just allow a lot of the framework to do a lot more of the work
• Allow C# developers to interact with the images and make better programs (eg, an extremely interactive street directory)
• Provide an environment on mobile devices that is more user friendly

Links

• http://memorabillia.hardrock.com
• http://www.liveside.net/blogs/developer/archive/2008/05/11/
  create-a-deep-zoom-panorama-with-windows-live.aspx
• http://www.soulsolutions.com.au/Blog/tabid/73/entryid/410/default.aspx

Other unrelated but interesting technology links

• Photosynth – http://labs.live.com/photosynth

Session 3 – Podcasting Passion from a Luddite

Presenter: Ian Kath

This is a presentation/story from a just user/non geek whom found a passion for podcasting. From the moment he found out about these he developed something within to find a way to just meet anyone through podcasting realm. He dropped his major job to start develop Your Story Podcast and now only works about 15 hours a week, and with his podcasting stories, loves the podcasting lifestyle.

His beliefs are…

• Computers are a long way off perfect "point and done" user interfaces, and he encourages those around to rush to that goal
• Computers are only a tool, he only uses it to go meet people, find out their story and share their story through his website
• To a normal person, a computer is not user friendly. You should turn off the computer and discover the real world.
• He is passionate about podcasting to keep going and not stop like other stuff he has attempted with computer stuff.

Links

• His blog: Your Story Podcast

Interlude

Presenter: Steve Dalton

We were given free technology giveaways!!! Items included many hardware, print and software items.

Session 4 – Data Portability

Presenter: Elias Bizannes

…is the idea that instead of having many many different sources of information on the internet, your able to update one website and all other websites will update by themselves.

They think that…

• Locking up data does not give a company intellectual advantage to other companies
• It’s not right for you to give up your rights to privacy to your own information on the internet, and that you should be able to alter your own data without it seeping anywhere.
• They’re challenging the notions of whom should own your data/personal information rights, and if anyone should "own" them.

Open North is trying to…

• Find a privacy standard that is good with both companies and users
• Make companies figure out that locking data is not a good idea
• Trying to get all the major companies to work together with their information, as well as keeping it quiet, and keeping identity theft at bay.
• Tell the general population that there are serious privacy issues on the internet.
• if you have a great idea to help the cause, they will try to help you out – "if you joined the mailing lists, you could be considered a pro within a week"

Links

Data Portability.org 

Session 5 – wxRuby

Presenter: Steve Dalton

Session 1 – A geek’s social conscious

Cameron Reilly was humble enough to start off the day with a short whistle accompanied with a welcome for everyone in the room (approx 30) in encouragement to "come on down" and help him as an audience. We all complied

Starting off the day we had quite a moral teaching. Cameron’s view was that we as geeks in australia, and around the world, are so privileged today with the opportunities we have. We have a platform to change the world right in front of us that right now is just used in waste compared to what we can do. Instead of coming together to talk about the latest facebook or mac applications/hardware/etc we could be speaking about how we could changed things to help out the world.

We were given a vision to start off our day about how us as people who have skills to talk to the world should look and see what us as well paid white collar workers are doing compared to someone in our past, approximately 1000 years ago. Cameron is a man whom cares about the future well being of the world.

Session 2 – Adobe Air

Akash gave a great presentation on how he thinks that Adobe Air is going to be an extension of the browser. He started out by saying that the current website browsers are flawed by the fact that they are constricted by the fact that they are a browser. He then explained that Adobe Air is a program that uses website technology to easily create website applications that run on your desktop.

Akash then went on to explain how to make these applications, the usefulness of these applications, what this means for the future of web development, etc.

Session 3 – WCF

Spoken by Dan this pretty much explained everything you needed to know about WCF if you were ever interested to start learning it.

Powerpoint: barcamp-wcf-toomey

Session 4 – Screencasts

Powerpoint: screencasts-are-great

Session 5 – Why I changed to: Ruby on Rails

— gave us a live coding example on how easy it really is to use Ruby on Rails. Below are the primary items that he said why he changed from PHP to Ruby on Rails

• Migrations
• Makes everything a lot easier and quicker to create
• Everything is in objects
• He would much prefer the Ruby development setup

Lunch!!!

When? Sunday 25th May at 3pm

Where? The walk will start in the Roma St Parklands as it has previously (although now at the Spring Hill corner as opposed to the amphitheater), but this year will finish in Fortitude Valley where the after-party will take place.

Why? Why not?

For all the extra information on all that you need to know about this event, the Zombie Walk Brisbane Website has been set up for all your undead needs.

Promotionals

The promotional poster for this event

This years Zombie Walk afterparty

This years route

We all know that now and then that everyone, for wide range of reasons, needs to find a new job. We should also know how hard it is to not only find the perfect place to find your perfect job. So, in this article I’m going to give you a great long list of places that your able to regularly check up on to whether that job you’ve been seeking for is still available.

Option One: Job Specific Websites

Seek.com.au

CareerOne.com.au

MyCareer.com.au

Brisbane Gumtree.com.au

JobSites.com.au

JobSearch.gov.au

A few tips to keep in mind when using websites to look for a job

• Make sure to keep your registered information up to date. If an employer can’t access your information they will move on.
• As a general practice, please prepare both your resume and cover letter to be appropriate to your specific job. This does not mean that you should make a resume template and replace some key words with the job description.
• There is always the chance that none of the jobs that you apply for will be able to reply to your request. They simply won’t have the time
• If you are fortunately to get a reply about your application whether good or bad, make sure that you reply asap to make yourself look good in your possible employers eyes.

Option Two: The Paper Classifieds

Whilst looking through the weekly paper every week there are usually a large selection of advertisements for jobs available specifically for places around Brisbane. These are usually a great option for those who don’t feel comfortable with surfing the internet or for those who are just looking for a wide range of opportunities and don’t want to look specifically for anything.

You’re able to find these sorts of classifieds within these regular newspapers…

• The Sunday Mail
• The Brisbane Times
• The Courier-Mail
• Quest

A few tips to keep in mind when using the paper classifieds to look for a job

• Speed is of the essence. The faster your able to get in contact with your potential employer, whether that be through a phone call, an email or even rocking up on their business door step, the better your chances.
• Make sure your able to make a physical appearance. Unlike the website advertisements where the initial contact is either through email or a phone initiated by the advertising business, it can be to your benefit to sell yourself face to face to your employer. They know that whatever is on your resume are just words and that they’re eventually going to need some proof to your abilities.

Option Three: Employment Agencies

If your down in the ditch and can’t find anywhere for your dream job you may want to think about getting in contact with the many employment agencies in Brisbane. Instead of spending a multitude of time sifting through the mountain of resumes that comes as a guarantee when advertising, it’s sometimes easier for businesses to use employment agencies to cut down the paper work and pay someone else to find their perfect person for the job.

If your willing to come into contact with an employment agency your best idea would be to search the yellow pages under ‘employment services’.

A few tips to keep in mind when using employment agencies to look for a job

• By walking in best dressed will mean that you will probably get the best service available
• These people are working their jobs to help you find a job, as well as a lot of other people just like you, so please be mindful that it may take a little while for you to be requested a possible application.

If there are any other options that you would suggest, please leave a nice comment to inform us.