I awoke this  morning to an errie orange red glow and the air was thick with dust that made your mouth dry.  Sydney has been engulfed by a massive dust storm after strong winds brought large amounts of dust from inland NSW and the desert area of South Australia and dumped it on the city.  I have never seen anything like it.  However I guess this is what to expect if you live in the driest continent in the world.  It was very strange driving the Sydney Sun office at Gordon with the head-lights on and limited visibility.  People with asthma and other breathing problems have been advised to stay indoors.

Below are some photos:

The view from my back balcony this morning Sept. 23 2009

Sun Microsystems Gordon Office this morning Sept. 23 2009  

Sydney Harbor Bridge (source: smh.com.au)

Sydney Opera House (Source: smh.com.au)

Google Maps is launching a feature that allows Australian commuters to view up-to-date traffic flow information.   I guess this is just a natural extension of Google Maps.  BTW Google Maps was developed out of Google engineers in Sydney Australia. 

Traffic information is overlaid on to Google Maps to correspond to the speed of the traffic with green meaning "free sailing", yellow meaning "medium congestion", red meaning "heavy congestion" and black meaning "parking lot."

I can see value in this in checking the traffic on your route before say you leave home.   

Traffic conditions in the Sydney CBD as per Google Maps Traffic

Google has just launched "Fast Flip" at the TechCrunch 50 technology conference in San Francisco.  Fast Flip is a web based application that allows users to browse quickly through news stories from the websites of Google's three dozen partners.  

Google Fast Flip

This is cool..  I just checked it out.   You view just the opening headline and the front page of the article and you can quickly "flip" to the next article.  The articles are sorted into by topic or source or what is popular.

I am a media and news junkie and I found this a quick a easy way to absorb a lot of information and to find articles that interest me.

What is also interesting is that Google is sourcing the content from partners who will share in the revenue and this will drive users to the websites of the partner.  This seems fairer that just aggregating news stories in the case of Google News.

Here is the link to Fast Flip

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I have joined the Twitter band wagon and are in the Twitterverse.    Twitter has seem explosive growth, seeing month growth of 1,382% in early 2009 according to Nielsen.    However it is also well known that about 50% of users give up sending tweets after about a month and only 40% of users are retained.

Some see Twitter as the future of communication and yes I agree to an extent that is excellent means to track what your friends are doing and is fantastic means to get instant news updates especially when a big story breaks.  However from my experience Twitter seems to be dominated by celabarties who want to tell the world what they are up to.  Yes sure it is fascinating to know what Lance Armstrong had for breakfast, however is it earth shattering?   However I can see a use for Twitter to say get messages to thousands of people instantly in the case  of an emergency such as a bush fire threat. 

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Each year as we flick our calendes to September 11, I am sure we all stop and think and reflect.  For me I was on a plane flying from Sydney to San Francisco for a Sun meeting.  I landed at SFO only a few hours after the events in New York that morning.  I now know why we were escourted into SFO by fighter jets. 

I can remember landing at SFO and the airport was been cleared by riot police and there were police everywhere.  I did not know what was going until I got on the then shuttle bus to  the Rental Car Center and people were talking on their cell phones.  I saw the first images when I got to the Avis counter.  I can remember driving down the 101 listening to the radio in shock.  I wanted to call my parents in Sydney, so I drove to my favorite cafe in Palo Alto, University Cafe on University Avenue.  I called my parents from the cafe, it was 2:00AM Sydney time.  I woke them up with the news.  To this day I am relieved that they were not aware what was going when I was in the air.

That week in Newark and Palo Alto was somber and I still have a little American Flag on my office wall that I picked up from a memorial service in Palo Alto later that week.    I can remember going to a collage football game at Stanford University the next weekend and standing for a minute silence and the national anthem. It was very moving.  I also remember American Flags everywhere, on cars, in shop fronts and even in the windows of the Sun Newark campus.

We all need to stop and remember today. 

University Cafe, Palo Alto 

The daily commute getting you down?   Have a long walk to or from a public transport node?   This could be the answer.  The Clip bike from Giant.  

The Clip bike is folding bike that can transform into a slick but compact bike in about 30 seconds and looks great.   It is light and has eight gears. I have seen folding bikes before in Amsterdam, but they look clunky and heavy.  This looks light and cool.  A neat way to whiz about the city between meetings or to and from the train station.     Here is a link for more details. 

Nokia is to enter the computer business with the announcement that Nokia is to start to make laptops entering the fiercely competitive but fast growing netbook market with the Booklet  3G netbook computer.    This sounds like Apple in reverse!  

 The netbook market is HOT right now and grew at more than 127% over 2008 according to IDC to over 26 million units.   Yes margins are very thin and the key to Nokia's success will be the ability to differentiate.   Nokia could be on a winner with "continuous connectivity" meaning that you can be on line all the time, similar to a smartphone, without the need for access to wi-fi in a neat affordable package.    You can also expect a neat design from Nokia.

The next thing will be the ability to make phone calls from your netbook and I don't mean via Skype.  I can see this not been too far away as netbooks get smaller and smaller..  but you would need to use a bluetooth headset as holding a netbook up to your ear would not be a good look!

Nokia's Booklet 3G netbook computer

There is always much media  speculation at any Apple media event as to what new products will be launched and announced.  This time was no different with fever pitch speculation as to if  Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs would make an appearance following a liver transplant.  Yes Jobs did appear at the event and appears to be back in control of the company.

The key announcement at the event was the launch of a new version of the iPod Nano which now includes a video camera, an FM radio, a Pedometer and a microphone and speaker.   Neat very neat.  I like the idea of the pedometer and the FM radio.  This would encourage you to take your iPod with you wherever you go and to have a camera on hand is an added bonus.    I think this new Nano is going to be a winner.

The new Nano with video, FM radio and a pedometer  

In know it has been a while..  however I am back in the blogosphere.    Look forward to reading interesting posts form my blog with news and views from Sydney Australia.