That didn’t take long. This past winter, Apple sold more iPads than Macs for the first time, and more iPhones – way more – than iPods. And they made more than $US20 billion doing it.

The 4.19 million iPads Apple sold in the third quarter is a huge number, surpassing record Mac sales of 3.9 million – up 27 per cent over last year. Even hugerer: 14.1 million iPhones in those three months alone. That’s nearly double what they sold in the fourth quarter of 2009. That $US20 billion revenue was a record for the company, as was the staggering $US4.3 billion profit.

If these are the numbers before the Christmas season, I can’t wait to hear what kind of guidance they’re about to give. The call to discuss earnings starts at 5pm EST (8am AEDST); we’ll update as warranted then.

Updates from the earnings call:

Apple basically sold as many iPhones as they could make, meaning that 14.1 million number isn’t even as high as it could have been.

There have been over 125 million iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches) sold. iOS 4.2 is still on track for November, with wireless printing being a focal point.

There are now over 35,000 iPad apps alone in the App Store.

A surprise visit from Steve Jobs! He’s basically taking the opportunity to go after the competition. All of the following is a very rough transcript:

We sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter, which represents a 91 per cent unit growth. It handily beat RIM’s 12.1 BlackBerrys sold. We’ve now passed RIM, and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future. They must move beyond their area of comfort. I think it’s going to be a challenge for them to convince developers to create apps for them.

But what about Google? Eric Schmidt said they were activating 200,000 Android devices per day. Apple has activated a peak of almost 300,000 per day. We hope manufacturers will soon start reporting how many Android phones they ship.

Google loves to characterise Android as open and iOS and iPhone as closed. We find this as disingenuous… Android is very fragmented. Many Android OEMs… install proprietary user interfaces… the user is left to figure it all out. Compare this to the iPhone, where every device works the same.

Open systems don’t always win… In reality, we think the open versus closed system just clouds things for the customer. The real issue is “fragmented” versus “integrated”. We see tremendous value in having Apple, rather than our users, be the system integrator. We believe integrated will trump fragmented every time.

On the “avalanche of tablets coming: it appears to be a handful of credible products. They also appear to be largely 7-inch screens, unlike Apple’s 10-inch screen. A 7-inch screen is only 45 per cent as large as Apple’s iPad screen… There are clear limits of how close you can place elements on a touchscreen before users can’t tap, pinch or touch them. The 7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, too small to compete with an iPad. Even Google is telling manufacturers not to use Froyo and to wait for a special tablet release next year. iPad now has over 35,000 apps on the iPhone. This new crop of tablets will have zero. Our potential competitors are having a hard time coming close to the iPad’s prices, even with their far smaller, not-as-nice screen.

This is why we think the current batch of tablets will be dead on arrival. Competitors will switch to 10-inch form this time next year. “Sounds like lots of fun ahead.”

The iPad is clearly going to affect notebook computers. The iPad proves it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. We’re already seeing tremendous interest in education and much to my surprise from business. We’ve got the tiger by the tail here. This is a new model of computing.

Q: Any thoughts on Flash?

SJ: Flash memory? We love flash memory.

Flash hasn’t affected us at all; most of the video on the internet is HTML5… We have a very good product here that’s tough to match… we priced iPad pretty aggressively. We’re out to win this one.

I think right now it’s a battle for mindshare of developers, and a battle for the mindshare of customers. Right now iPhone and Android are winning that battle.

Q: How is Apple TV doing?

SJ: We have gone to a streaming model on Apple TV. It’s complete streaming. All the content is rented from the iPhone 4 or streamed from your computer or streamed from your iPhone or iPad with AirPlay. So how is our new model of Apple TV doing? In a very short amount of time we’ve already sold 250,000 of them. I think it’s a great product and its $US99/$A129 price point is very enticing.

Q: Major competitors?

SJ: Nokia’s the biggest and they’re good at what they do. But we don’t want to be like them. Android is our biggest competitor. They outshipped us for the first time as we were transitioning to iPhone 4. We’re waiting to find out what happens in this quarter. One of these days we’ll eventually learn. I imagine we’ll be competing with them for quite some time, but we have very different approaches. We believe in our approach very strongly.

Q: Share versus price points?

SJ: Nokia makes $US50 handsets, and we don’t know how to make a great smartphone for $US50. So our goal is to make a breakthrough, great product. Make the best products in every industry that we compete in and to drive the costs down while constantly making the products better at the same time. That’s what we did with iPod. Offer more functionality at the same price or sometimes at a lower price. We have a very low market share in the phone market, and we have a very high market share now in tablets because we’re the first mover. But we don’t think about it that way. The reason we wouldn’t make a 7-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit a price point, it’s because we don’t think you can make a great 7-inch tablet. Software developers aren’t going to deal real well with all these different products where they have to resize their software… We’re all about making the best product at aggressive products.

You’re looking at it as a hardware manufacturer that doesn’t know a lot about software, and you’re sitting around saying how can we make this cheaper? You can make it smaller and put a slower processor on it and less memory, and you assume that the software will somehow come alive on this product you’re dreaming of, but it won’t. These app developers… most of them will not follow you. Most of them will say I’m sorry, but I’m not going to write a watered down version of my app just because you’ve got this phone that costs $US50.

Q: Why aren’t you more interested in buybacks of dividends?

SJ: We strongly believe that one or more strategic opportunities might come along, and we’ll be in a unique position to act because of our cash position… I think that we’d like to continue to keep our powder dry because we do feel that there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future.

Q: Why do you have a pricing advantage?

SJ: I think so much of it is because we do the engineering ourselves. We’ve learned a lot on everything we’ve done, from the miniaturisation on iPod and iPhones. I think we’ve learned a lot, we’ve developed a lot of our own components where others have to buy them on the market with middlemen getting their cut. We’re systems architects and know how to build things in very efficient ways. This is a product we’ve been preparing for for a decade.

Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

Record Mac, iPhone and iPad Sales

Highest Revenue and Earnings Ever

CUPERTINO, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 fourth quarter ended September 25, 2010. The Company posted record revenue of $US20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $US4.31 billion, or $US4.64 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $US12.21 billion and net quarterly profit of $US2.53 billion, or $US2.77 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.9 percent compared to 41.8 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 57 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

“We are blown away to report over $US20 billion in revenue and over $US4 billion in after-tax earnings-both all-time records for Apple”

Apple sold 3.89 million Macs during the quarter, a 27 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 91 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.05 million iPods during the quarter, representing an 11 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company also sold 4.19 million iPads during the quarter.

“We are blown away to report over $US20 billion in revenue and over $US4 billion in after-tax earnings-both all-time records for Apple,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone sales of 14.1 million were up 91 percent year-over-year, handily beating the 12.1 million phones RIM sold in their most recent quarter. We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year.”

“We’re thrilled with the performance and strength of our business, generating almost $US5.7 billion in cash flow from operations during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $US23 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $US4.80.”

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q4 2010 financial results conference call beginning at 2:00 p.m. PDT on October 18, 2010 at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq410/. This webcast will also be available for replay for approximately two weeks thereafter.

This press release contains forward-looking statements including without limitation those about the Company’s estimated revenue and earnings per share. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ. Risks and uncertainties include without limitation the effect of competitive and economic factors, and the Company’s reaction to those factors, on consumer and business buying decisions with respect to the Company’s products; continued competitive pressures in the marketplace; the ability of the Company to deliver to the marketplace and stimulate customer demand for new programs, products, and technological innovations on a timely basis; the effect that product introductions and transitions, changes in product pricing or mix, and/or increases in component costs could have on the Company’s gross margin; the inventory risk associated with the Company’s need to order or commit to order product components in advance of customer orders; the continued availability on acceptable terms, or at all, of certain components and services essential to the Company’s business currently obtained by the Company from sole or limited sources; the effect that the Company’s dependency on manufacturing and logistics services provided by third parties may have on the quality, quantity or cost of products manufactured or services rendered; the Company’s reliance on the availability of third-party digital content; the potential impact of a finding that the Company has infringed on the intellectual property rights of others; the Company’s dependency on the performance of distributors, carriers and other resellers of the Company’s products; the effect that product and service quality problems could have on the Company’s sales and operating profits; the Company’s reliance on sole service providers for iPhone® in certain countries; the continued service and availability of key executives and employees; war, terrorism, public health issues, natural disasters, and other circumstances that could disrupt supply, delivery, or demand of products; potential litigation from the matters investigated by the special committee of the board of directors and the restatement of the Company’s consolidated financial statements; and unfavorable results of other legal proceedings. More information on potential factors that could affect the Company’s financial results is included from time to time in the Company’s public reports filed with the SEC, including the Company’s Form 10-K, as amended, for the fiscal year ended September 26, 2009, its Forms 10-Q for the quarters ended December 26, 2009; March 27, 2010; and June 26, 2010; and its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 25, 2010 to be filed with the SEC. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information, which speak as of their respective dates.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple is reinventing the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

18 October 2010

An increase in the number of asylum seekers has put pressure on Australia’s existing facilities

The Australian government has unveiled plans for two more detention centres to accommodate an increasing number of asylum seekers.

It also announced that children and family groups would be moved from detention into community-based accommodation.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said it was not the Australian way to have children behind razor wire.

The new detention centres in Perth and Adelaide will house 2,000 people.

Asylum and immigration issues were focal points in Australia’s recent election campaign.

The country’s policy of mandatory detention for all migrants without papers while their asylum applications are processed has been criticised by the United Nations.

Child care

Ms Gillard said “significant numbers” of minors and families would be moved into community-based accommodation as part of a more “humane” approach to the issue.

I don’t think it is the Australian way to have kids behind razor wire in the hope that that is a deterrent”

Julia Gillard Australian prime minister

“This is especially important for children, for whom protracted detention can have negative impacts on their development and mental health,” Ms Gillard said.

“I don’t think it is the Australian way to have kids behind razor wire in the hope that that is a deterrent,” she added.

She said several hundred families would be moved by the middle of next year.

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said that while the country needed to maintain one of the toughest asylum policies in the world, improvements could be made to the treatment of asylum seekers.

“Children will be able to, and obliged to, attend school normally and to live a normal life,” he said.

The government is in talks with East Timor and Indonesia about a plan to build a regional processing centre for asylum seekers.

Earlier conservative governments has instituted the so-called “Pacific solution” under which asylum seekers were detained on the Pacific island of Nauru while their claims were processed.

Mr Bowen said the best deterrent would be a rigorous system of checks on whether applicants fulfilled conditions to be granted refugee status.

Holy dinner date! Two of tech’s heaviest heavyweights, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, had supper together two weeks ago and talked about—well, we don’t exactly know, but you can be sure it was probably more about Ping than poking.

It’s true! Apple CEO Steve Jobs had Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over for dinner at his pad and then went for a walk afterward to talk some more.

The big question is obviously what they talked about and what the significance of this meeting of the billion-dollar minds was all about.

Easy money would be on the two talking about how Ping, Apple’s new music-based iTunes social network, might better sync up with Facebook’s 500 million-strong population. If you’ll take a trip down memory lane with me for a moment, you’ll remember that Facebook and Apple didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye on a few things when Ping launched last month.

Perhaps this meeting was a first, necessary step in ironing out the wrinkles. It doesn’t take a genius to see the boatloads of money that could be made for both companies if Ping were tightly integrated into the Facebook platform. [LA Times]

Red Devil no more … Wayne Rooney set to quit Manchester United. Source: Paul Ellis / AFP

Manchester United star Wayne Rooney is set to quit the club because of limited match time under manager Sir Alex Ferguson, according to media reports.

Rooney is yet to make a public statement, but he now feels that his relationship with Ferguson has suffered irreparable damage, reports The Guardian.

Ferguson’s latest snub of Rooney fuelled fresh speculation the Manchester United superstar could be heading for the Old Trafford exit, despite the 24-year-old still having more than a year to run onhis current contract.

Ferguson left Rooney on the bench for the clash with West Bromwich Albion, where the Red Devils squandered a two-goal lead to settle for a 2-2 draw.

Ferguson did not comment about the decision to omit Rooney, a move that followed speculation of a rift after the striker earlier contradicted the United boss’s claims he was injured by stating he was fully fit.

It came after an earlier decision to drop Rooney for his return to Everton in September, which followed revelations about the 24-year-old England international’s private life.

Rooney made headliens after poor performances and injury at the 2010 World Cup, as well as an alleged relationship with a prostitute, Jennifer Thompson

Since then Rooney has been in and out of the United starting line-up and looking a pale imitation of the potent attacking force who was crowned the 2010 Footballer of the Year.
 
Rooney moved to Manchester United in 2004 after making his professional debut with Everton as an 18-year-old in 2004.

An Australian father has been jailed for life for murdering his three sons in what prosecutors called “an unspeakable act of vengeance”.

Robert Farquharson, 41, was convicted of driving his car carrying his sons into a reservoir and leaving them to drown as he swam free.

The prosecution said he acted out of resentment and anger against his ex-wife Cindy Gambino.

The so-called Father’s Day murders has sparked shock and controversy.

Farquharson had been driving his three sons – Jai, 10, Tyler, seven, and two-year-old Bailey – to visit his ex-wife in Geelong, near Melbourne, on Father’s Day in 2005.

‘Not enough’

He had pleaded not guilty to murder, saying he had blacked out during a coughing fit at the wheel of his car.

He was first convicted and given a life sentence without parole in 2007, but a re-trial was ordered on appeal, leading to his conviction in July this year.

The Supreme Court judge in the Australian state of Victoria, Lex Lasry, told Farquharson that he must serve at least 33 years of his life sentence, but could be eligible for parole after that.

Ms Gambino has told reporters the chance of parole means the sentence is not enough.

“It’s a life sentence for me. It should be a life sentence for him,” she said.

Justice Lasry argued in favour of parole, saying Farquharson was “not a threat to the community as best as I can tell”.

He told Farquharson that “prior to these terrible incidents, you could be properly described as a man of good character”.

Friends and relatives of the father say he is a broken man who deeply loved his children and would carry the grief with him forever.

Justice Lasry said: “Even if it’s momentary – if it’s a momentary crime – it’s a momentary crime of the most breathtaking proportions.”

BBC © MMX The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

eBay is adding QR Codes scanning to its barcode scanning app RedLaser, which the company acquired from Occipital in June.

The app, which has has seen over five million downloads from the App Store (that’s 3 additional million downloads since June), looks up price comparisons in its product database by scanning the barcode of an product. QR Codes, which is short for Quick Response (because they can be read quickly by a mobile phone through its camera), are used to take a piece of information from a transitory media and put it in to your cell phone – this can be links, videos, text, photos and more.

With RedLaser’s QR Code integration, consumers can receive information such as links to videos, product reviews or websites to get more product information, contact information for customer support, or calendar appointments for upcoming sporting events and concerts The new app will also populate product results with eBay Marketplaces and Half.com listings.

While QR codes are popular amongst the geek set, the technology hasn’t yet become a mainstream way to identify products in U.S. stores (barcodes dominate this arena). In fact, I can’t remember that the last time I saw a QR code on a product at a store. But eBay claims that QR codes are popular in Asia and other parts of the world and are gaining traction in the U.S.

CrunchBase Information

eBay

Information provided by CrunchBase

I’ll be honest. I don’t know much about the bio of German-based street artist Mr. Talion. But what I lack in background information I more than make up with appreciation of his work. Clever and cutting, Mr. Talion weilds his cultural sarcasm with a varsatile grip and makes a big scene while keeping a very low profile.

I love this next project. Event canceled mischief.

Yeesh. Balls on this guy!

Street Art Price Tagger

14 October 2010 Last updated at 19:00 ET
By Daniel Emery Technology reporter, BBC News

Medal of Honor’s prequel book author Chris Ryan on the game’s realism

The video game Medal of Honor (MoH) has gone on sale despite calls by the UK defence secretary to ban it.

The game follows the exploits of Special Forces troops battling insurgents in Afghanistan in 2002.

In August, Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox called for the game to be banned after it emerged that users could fight as The Taliban.

Its developer EA said the game was meant to be realistic, but eventually renamed The Taliban “The Opposition”.

This edition, the latest in EA’s long running series of games bearing the MoH title, has dispensed with its World War II theme and opted to recreate modern combat in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

But with 150,000 American, British and Allied troops fighting in Afghanistan, many felt taking on the role of the Taliban was a step too far.

Dr Fox described the game as “un-British” and said it was “shocking that someone would think it acceptable to recreate the acts of the Taliban against British soldiers”.

The Canadian and Danish Defence Ministers also criticised the game.

EA weathered the storm for a few weeks, but in early October the firm bowed to pressure and took the term “Taliban” out of the multiplayer option.

Despite the change, the game is still banned from sale on military bases, although troops can purchase it elsewhere and play it on station.

‘Ploy’

Johnny Minkley, a journalist with video gaming website Eurogamer, told BBC News that he thought EA’s decision to allow users to play as the Taliban was a marketing ploy.

“I don’t think EA was that naive,” he said.

Players fight as Special Forces operating in Afghanistan in 2002

“They knew that this would be controversial, but they needed to do everything to get attention, especially when they are going up against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare – the biggest brand in the world.”

The game itself has received mostly positive reviews, scoring an average of 75% according to the review aggregator site Metacritic. Computer and Video Games Magazine described it as “an accomplished, confident online shooter”.

Mr Minkley agreed, saying the developers had done “a really good job” but added that the product was some way from being perfect.

“The campaign stands up well and it is a competent and exciting first person shooter.

“But I do have a problem with it, and that is that the single player mode is very short.

“A competent gamer could get through the entire game in under five hours.”

Logging on

In the 1990s, single player games usually lasted for days, if not weeks. However, that changed with the 2001 release of Max Payne, which could be completed in under 12 hours.

“This is an ever growing trend – we saw it with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – of having an exciting, but short, single player game,” said Mr Minkley.

The decision to allow users to fight as The Taliban caused controversy

“Developers claim that the multi-player aspect – where players compete on line – extends the life of the game, but the fact remains many people cannot or do not want to play online,” he added.

US developer Activision’s last modern combat shooter – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – grossed over $1bn in sales, and the follow on title Call of Duty: Black Ops, due for release on 9 November this year, is expected to do as well, if not better.

EA’s decision to switch the Medal of Honor theme from the Second World War to a modern day conflict has prompted some critics to accuse the US firm of imitation.

Mr Minkley agreed, but said the decision was a financial one and Medal of Honor was not a pale imitation.

“What they’ve tried to do is focus on the confusion and uncertainty of western forces in Afghanistan and it feels different from a Hollywood style shooter like Call of Duty.

“You also have to bear in mind there is a degree of WWII fatigue and, ultimately, games developers are there to make money,” he said.

“This is a commercial decision to follow the success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 but – other than The Taliban issue – is far less deliberately proactive than Call of Duty.”

The full body scans at airports – the ones that reveal your naughty bits in great detail – are fortunately optional, given prior abuse. But after Octopber 31, if you opt out, it looks like you’ll be more thoroughly “screened” than ever.

While turning down the full body scan has always resulted in a pat-down, there’s a newer “enhanced” screening procedure that’s being tested at some airports if you opt out, like at Boston’s Logan airport. Here’s what’s it like described on Daily Kos:

Two (female) TSA officers stepped over to me, and gave me the new procedure, which included touching my face and hair, and in between and directly under my breasts. Much like a medical appointment, they explained the motions they would make before actually touching me, and both women were professional and polite about the screening – even apologetic about it – but I couldn’t help but think this was overly invasive overkill.

And on another blog:

Immediately, the screeners we very rude to me and ordered me to sit down, which I did. I waited with no communication and no acknowledgement that my wallet and carry-ons had long since come through their screening, and were waiting on the other side for anyone to pick up.

Finally a team came over, had me go through the metal detector, collect my things and go to a separate area. These screeners were very pleasant, if also thorough–they took every single item in every pocket of every bag and swabbed each separately, and scanned for explosives. They patted me down and asked a lot of questions.

The Transportation Security Administration confirms to Christopher Elliott that it “is in the process of implementing an enhanced pat-down at security checkpoints as one of our many layers of security”, which is being tested in Boston and Las Vegas.

They’re more coy about how and when the new, gropier screening technique will be implemented across the US, but the gist of Elliott’s conversation with the TSA is that it’s either going to roll out out nationwide on October 31, or it’s going to be phased in gradually. (I would guess in time for holiday travel.) So get ready to spread ‘em. Or, um, spread ‘em. [Elliott.org via BoingBoing]

We’re live at Sony’s Internet TV press conference, where we’re seeing the “world’s first HDTV powered by Google TV” (and its gnarly remote).

The Hardware

• The Sony Internet TV line-up will consist of four models: 24 inches, 32 inches, 40 inches and 46 inches
• The four sets will span in price from $US599 to $US1399, available for pre-order at SonyStyle.com now
• Sony is also offering an accompanying, internet-capable Blu-ray deck

• The Sony TV will be the only Google TV-enabled device available in time for the Christmas holidays
• The TV appears to lack much of the hardware functionality of the other Google TV device we’ve seen so far, such as the Logitech Revue’s video chatting.

The Google TV Implementation

The Internet TV uses Chrome for its Google TV browser and search functionality. Search will cull content from live TV, your DVR and the web, as well as serving up bookmarked programming. The Sony Internet TV will be able to tap into the rest of Google TV’s Android ecosystem.

Navigating the menus felt less fluid than Logitech’s implementation with the Revue – lag was noticeable through some parts of the interface. The menu structure itself is intuitive enough – standard Google TV fare – and a Sony rep confirmed that content-wise, the only thing they’re adding to Google’s platform is a couple of dozen “Sony Recommends” video channels.

The Keypad

Sony is touting its button-encrusted remote as a definitive, convenient way of managing its Internet TV and Blu-ray setup. We’re still trying to guess what all those buttons do. Sony says design elements have been borrowed from the PS3, in addition to a full QWERTY keyboard and mouse functionality.

My good friend Vinny sent me a set of American war propaganda posters and they really got me thinking about how phenomenally disconnected our present society, and in particular, my generation has become in relationship to the wars we have fought. Unless you have a family member or friend serving active duty it can be commonplace to completely forget that we have been at war for almost a decade!

I want to be clear that I don’t presently and have never been in favor of the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. I believe they were both opportunistic attacks on sovereign, albeit completely fucked up nations perpetuating an entire union of nations to drop bombs and chase down the middle-eastern equivalent of the Bloods and Crips.

ANYWAYS…… that’s not what I’m getting at.

These propaganda posters illustrate a need for the people to get involved and intimately be aware of the cost of war. These emotional, social and financial expenditures were to be prevalent from deep inside your mind all the way to the dinner table. You were aware of the war when you went shopping, when you cooked dinner and even when you had simple conversations with loved ones. When America was at war, Americans knew about it and Americans owned it.

While these posters graphically illustrated images of American soldiers dying in the field of combat, our generation has been intentionally left in the dark. When WWII propaganda encouraged us to buy war bonds, our president told us to hug our kids, go shopping and ride Space Mountain.

Sure, these posters encouraged a population to blindly follow and were intended to squash any attempt at dissent but they put the ugliness of war on the table….. literally. And when there is something sitting on your table you are much more likely to pick it up, inspect it and ultimately own your reactions to it.

Or you could just act like it isn’t happening, sport some Mickey ears and Shop Till You Drop!

Let’s own patriotism.

I find it amazing that there was so much propaganda deterring people from talking conversationally about the war. With social networks dominating the way we communicate and American soldiers having access to Twitter and Facebook on the war-front it seems unimaginable that common conversation was such a threat during WWII.

It’s ironic how much propaganda was distributed to encourage living a greener, more conservation focused way of living to promote success during wartime…… and yet the opposite message has been promoted throughout my entire life.

Gotta love those tree-hugging, conservation-minded, 1940’s WWII era Liberals and their Godless war-promoting Leftist agenda.

Ever buy a War Bond? My Grandparents used to buy me savings bonds. I’m pretty sure the only Bonds I’ve bought were the kind that helped with some nasty chaffing.

Has the working class ever been so publicly promoted in our generation?

Go ahead please!…. Take the day off.

(Que Texaco logo)

The 23-foot-long Lego USS Intrepid aircraft carrier should be renamed the USS Insane. It’s the largest Lego ship ever built. Ed Diment made it to minifig scale, complete with Wildcat and Corsair airplanes built by Ralph Savelsberg. Watch the video:

I told you. This thing is absolutely insane, larger than Jumpei Mitsui’s 22-foot battleship Yamato and

Malle Hawking’s 350-pound aircraft carrier.

Diment’s ship is a 1/40 reproduction of the USS Intrepid, one of the 24 Essex-class US Navy aircraft carriers built during World War II, exactly as she were in 1945. Nowadays, people can walk over the real Intrepid’s deck: It’s the Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City. If you were in Swindon, England, you could have actually walked over its Lego twin’s deck at the Great Western Lego Show.

To give you an idea of scale, look at the aircraft and crew above, created by Lego aircraft genius Ralph Savelsberg. Then look at the image and realise the magnitude of this mahoossive monolith of awesomeness. Its escort at the show was beautiful too: Gary Davis’ 8-foot long Balao-class submarine USS Pampanito and Chris Lee’s 9.5-foot Fletcher-class destroyer USS Haggard.

Yes, these people are crazy. And that’s exactly why we love them. [Ed Diment's USS Intrepid, Gary Davis' USS Pampanito, Chris Lee's USS Haggard, Ralph's airplanes via Brothers Brick]

Countries in Eastern Europe and Africa that harbour cyber criminals should be locked out of the global internet until their governments do something to reduce the threats, the former chief technology officer at the US National Security Agency says.

The Australian ISP industry is already one of the first in the world to develop an industry code that would see some infected Australian users effectively unable to access the open internet until they clean their computer of malware. This is due to formally come into effect on December 1.

While applauding this idea, Dr Prescott Winter, who left the NSA in February after a 27-year career there, including as its CTO, said governments and internet providers around the world could go a step further and target the source of many of the threats..

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Security companies regularly finger countries in Eastern Europe and Africa as being havens for cyber criminals and spawning much of the internet security threats affecting internet users worldwide. Even global superpowers like China have been accused of sponsoring hackers to attack Western internet companies including Google.

Winter said that when countries are consistently introducing cyber threats the global community should band together to effectively shut them out of the internet until their governments do something about it.

“In some cases the governments are clearly condoning this behaviour, clearly benefiting from it in some ways, and there needs to be a message not just to the guys who are writing this code and shipping it around but to the government,” Dr Winter, in Sydney this week, said in a phone interview.

“We levy sanctions on countries for terrorist issues, we levy sanctions on countries for other kinds of misbehaviour, so why not levy sanctions on countries for this kind of misbehaviour.”

Winter compared it to the sanctions in place against Iran over its efforts to develop nuclear weapons technology.

“Everybody can understand a nuclear weapon is a threat; people aren’t ready to understand that bad code is a threat but it’s pretty clear that it could do massive amounts of harm.”

The call comes amid growing concerns about politically-motivated cyber attacks on “critical infrastructure” around the world, such as banks, emergency services and utilities. A global survey released this week by Symantec found half of all companies running critical infrastructure systems worldwide say they have sustained politically motivated attacks.

The Department of Defence has investigated 250 “serious, sophisticated” cyber intrusions into Australian government networks in the first eight months of this year out of 1000 total cyber incidents. Last year, there were 2400 attempted intrusions and the government is now considering designating cyberspace as a fifth domain of warfare.

Winter, who is now the CTO for security solutions provider ArcSight, is under no illusions that implementing his idea to block countries from the internet would be an “enormously complex task”, as the kind of international authorities required to make it work have yet to be designed.

But he said the Internet Industry Association’s moves to quarantine Australian internet users until they clean up their computers was a “tremendously important step” that should be adopted in other countries like the US. The IIA earlier this year met US President Barack Obama’s cyber-security coordinator, Howard Schmidt, to discuss it as a potential model for the US to adopt.

“Once your machine is compromised and it becomes an incubating ground for botnets and various other kinds of malware then it’s in everybody’s interest to get it cleaned up, and so a certain forcing function is necessary,” said Winter.

IIA chief executive Peter Coroneos said “temporary quarantining” of Australians from the internet was just one measure built into the code that ISPs could adopt. In the first instance the ISP may simply send a letter to the user informing them that their computer is infected and showing them how to clean it up.

The measures are set to go live on December 1 but Coroneos said 78 Australian ISPs were already partly or fully compliant.

He said malware that surreptitiously turns PCs into “zombies” that can be remotely directed by hackers to attack targets was “now recognised as the most pressing and concerning aspect of cyber crime to emerge in the last decade”.

“The sooner you can isolate infected machines and get them cleaned out and back online the better it is for the internet and for the user,” he said.

Winter compared the approach to that taken in the public health arena, whereby quarantines and other restrictive processes are used to deal with highly infectious diseases.

“If you look at all these kinds of shared environments whether it’s health or health care, air travel or even the use of highways – we get certain privileges in exchange for accepting certain liabilities and responsibilities.”

In June, a year-long parliamentary cyber-crime inquiry called on the ISP industry to go a step beyond quarantining infected machines. It recommended contractual obligations requiring people to install anti-virus and firewall programs on their computers in order to access the internet.

If you’re sick of having your precious photographs ripped off and digital watermarking isn’t your thing, you can use this translucent copyright symbol to embed an obnoxious copyright symbol in all of your photographs! The mysterious Martin Nachtwey tells duckrabbit,

What I do is use a perspex © symbol that I dangle in front of the lens. It works a treat. No man, big or small, is stripping that mofo out of the image…I don’t see any problem in letting your readers in on the secret…all you need is a sheet of perspex, a jigsaw, a stick and some thread.

I have written all the small print onto the sign, so it is only readable under enlargement/reproduction. Another benefit of my method is that it works for film as well as digital!

Here’s how your awesome photographs turn out straight out of the camera:

Who’ll want to steal your images now? Booya!

(via duckrabbit)

Image credits: Photographs by Martin Nachtwey/David White and used with permission

Ugh! Dictatorships! Always spoiling our fun! That cutesy URL shortening service you might use (bit.ly, perhaps) is riding on Libya’s .ly domain suffix. And Libya ain’t pleased – one shortener, vb.ly, was recently shut down for violating Libya’s oppressive laws.

Ben Metcalfe, former owner of pro-porn URL shortening site vb.ly, found that his domain was abruptly deleted by the Libyan government. Metcalfe was told his domain was yanked because “pornography and adult material aren’t allowed under Libyan Law”. This doesn’t quite square with the facts, as vb.ly (like any shortener) doesn’t host content of any kind. This puts popular sites like bit.ly in similar jeopardy, as they violate this reactionary porn clause just as much as vb.ly.

So be careful, character-counting tweeters – Muammar el-Qaddafi is not pleased with your miniature, illegal porn links. Luckily, there are plenty of third-world domain suffixes for enterprising startups to hop on for trendy and nonsensical names – might we suggest Djibouti’s .dj, or Tanzania’s chic .tz? Bi.tz isn’t taken! Hurry! [TechCrunch]

A fun story over the weekend was the crazy photograph that Mail on Sunday photographer Mark Pain captured while covering the Ryder Cup. Tiger Woods was attempting a chip shot, and launched he ball directly at Ryder, who had his camera up to his face. Without flinching, Pain snapped the above photo moments before the ball struck his camera, bounced off his chest, and landed at his feet.

That’s crazy enough, but the more important question is: who is cigar man?

When we tweeted the story over the weekend, a large number of you noticed cigar man and pointed it out. With how viral this story and photo are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if more details about cigar man surfaced soon. We’ll update this post if there’s more about him.

Update: Now here’s a priceless Photoshop job circulating the web (thanks Mike!):

Update: Commenter Erhraeerh points out a couple more interesting things spotted in the photo. First, a boy peering out from his cave of legs:

Also, if you’re not tall enough to see over a sea of heads, why not bring along a periscope?

Image credit: Photograph by Mark Pain for Mail on Sunday

This is mechanically separated chicken. Chickens are turned into this goop so we can create delicious chicken nuggets and juicy chicken patties. It’s obscenely gross and borderline alien, but it’s not going to stop me from eating nuggets. They’re too good.

The process works a little something like this:

There’s more: because it’s crawling with bacteria, it will be washed with ammonia, soaked in it, actually. Then, because it tastes gross, it will be reflavored artificially. Then, because it is weirdly pink, it will be dyed with artificial colour.

Yeah, that’s just disgusting. But I can’t shake my roots. I’m a chicken nugget fan (and all around fast-food guy) for life. [Early Onset of the Night via BuzzFeed]

Surf wear maker Rip Curl recently teamed up with Timeslice Films for an ambitious project of shooting surfers in “bullet-time“, the effect that many people first saw in The Matrix. They used a crazy camera array of 52 Canon 5D Mark II DSLRs in order to capture the same shot from 52 different angles, stringing them together for the final footage.

Here’s the finished video:

After refusing a direct order, 16 year old Chen Shi was beaten to death at a boot camp for troubled youth in China. And it’s not the first time this has happened to teenage internet addicts.

A day at a typical Chinese internet addiction boot camp begins with a 6:20am wake up call and morning exercises. The day continues with a strict regiment of military drills, lectures, martial arts training, and sessions with psychologists. Lights out is at 9:30 sharp. Some boot camps employ the use of electric shock treatment, while others, like the Beiteng School in Changsha that Shi unfortunately attended, enjoy beating their students with a plastic pipe, a wooden baton, and handcuffs. And parents pay thousands of dollars for this.

Internet addiction among Chinese youth is a bit of an epidemic—1 in 10 teenage internet users are estimated to suffer from the problem. US internet addiction rates run at 3-8% for the entire population (which, apparently, is mostly comprised of our Giz readership).

Shi’s mother had initially been informed that he was in critical condition after “possibly” suffering from a sunstroke. He had been enrolled in the program due to his fear of hardship, weak willpower, and lack of self-confidence. It seems that a change in attitude, an increase in parent-child interaction, and some harsh regulations are in order to prevent more such deaths from occurring in the future. [TG Daily and CIO]

The Best Photography Apps for Your iPhone

With the quality of cellphone cameras approximating that of yesterday’s point-and-shoots, you can take some amazing photographs on your iPhone. It gets even better with the right apps apps. Here are our favorite photography apps for your iPhone.

Note: For a look at the flip side of the mobile OS coin, check out the best Android apps for photography.

Camera Plus

Your iPhone’s default Camera app is pretty great, but it doesn’t do much to solve the problems that are inherent with cellphone cameras. Camera Plus adds a few helpful features that do. Two of the most notable are burst mode and anti-shake. Burst mode lets you take a series of photographs quickly to help you get the best possible shot, and anti-shake lets you know when the camera is stable so you can avoid taking blurry photographs. The regular version is free, and the pro version will set you back a reasonable $2. [Camera Plus / Pro; iTunes App Store]

Darkroom

One of the biggest cameraphone annoyances—frankly, it extends to consumer cameras in general—is poor low-light performance. Darkroom is an app that seeks to alleviate this pain. It’s specifically geared to take photos in low light. While that’s pretty much all it does, it does it well. Darkroom will wait until your iPhone is steady before it snaps the picture, leaving you with the sharpest possible image. When you’re done, you can save your photo or upload it to an online album.
[Darkroom; iTunes App Store]

HipstaMatic

Hipstamatic is a blast and can be very addictive (so don’t say I didn’t warn you). It’s a camera app that simulates a bunch of analog cameras (mostly of the plastic variety) and creates some pretty stunning effects (check out the HipstaMatic Flickr group for some evidence). While the $2 app includes some starter lenses, flashes, and film stock, you’ll quickly find yourself buying new ones from the in-app store if you’re not careful. While HipstaMatic is, by far, my favorite camera app on the iPhone, do not buy it if you’re not prepared to either restrain yourself or sink at least an extra $5. The fun of HipstaMatic is in making your own camera configurations, but you’ll end up with beautiful pictures no matter what configuration you choose. [Hipstamatic; iTunes App Store]

CameraBag

CameraBag makes photographs look like they were taken with a variety of different cameras. Some of the filters are similar to what you’ll find in Hipstamatic, but there are a couple of key differences. First, CameraBag offers a more diverse range of effects. Second, you can take a picture within the app but preview the effects before saving them. While the entire process takes a bit longer and doesn’t have the quick-snapping fun of HipstaMatic, CameraBag ultimately provides you with a lot more control. It’ll run you $2 to give it a go. If you’re looking for something between Hipstamatic and CameraBag, take a look at lo-mob. It’s very similar to CameraBag in functionality, but provides numerous types of film stocks and camera effects that are closer to what you’ll find in HipstaMatic; it’s also $2. [CameraBag. / lo-mob; iTunes App Store]

DSLR Remote

DSLR Remote is a pretty amazing piece of work. It lets you use your iOS device to snap photos with your DSLR. You can control all its functionality and even access live view mode on certain cameras (note: this is only available in the pro version). It works by connecting your DSLR to your computer via USB and running a server application. Both your computer and and iOS device connect to the same network, letting the server accept instructions from the client. Photos are saved where you specify, and there’s very little lag between shots since everything’s transferred very quickly over USB. For a walk-through of the whole process, be sure to check out our how to on DSLR and iOS wireless photography. DSLR Remote is an affordable $2 for the lite version, and a considerably less affordable $20 for the pro version (although I’d argue it’s worth it). [DSLR Remote Pro / DSLR Remote Lite; iTunes App Store]

Photo Scatter

Taking photos with your iPhone is great, but they’re kind of useless if they just sit on your phone for the rest of eternity. While the built-in iPhone camera app offers a few sharing options, if you want to get your photos on photo-sharing sites, you may want to give Photo Scatter a try. Photo Scatter works with Flickr, Shutterfly, PhotoBucket, Picasa, Twitter, and Facebook (although, at the time of this writing, Facebook isn’t working so well). You set up all the services in advance, and then you can upload photos in your camera roll to any of them with just a few taps. Even better, you can use the app to take photos and upload them immediately after. Photo Scatter is free and is a great app, but it’s worth noting that they’re having a few issues with Facebook and the developers are currently overwhelmed with fixing the issue. It might be a little while before things get resolved, but it’s a free app so it’s not as though you’ll be losing anything by giving it a shot. [Photo Scatter; iTunes App Store]

Specialty Camera Apps

You’ll find far more than three “specialty” camera apps in the iTunes App Store—some of which you’ll find in the honorable mentions, but Pano ($2), ProHDR (Free), and Tilt Shift ($2) are the three we’d download first to bolster our phone’s camera chops.

Pano

Like its name suggests, Pano takes a series of successive photos, then stitches them all into a panorama. As you take your series of photographs, it’ll guide you to help you make sure the edges overlap. While the results I got were better using Autostitch, another panorama-making app, Pano’s stronger feature is that it allows you to take the photos and helps you throughout the process. [Pano; iTunes App Store]

ProHDR

ProHDR brings HDR photography to more than just the iPhone 4, allowing 3GS users to get in on the fun. Even if you’re an iPhone 4 user, ProHDR provides you with a lot more control than the default options offered natively in iOS. You can adjusts brightness, contrast, color, and more after taking an HDR photo, often allowing for better results. Plus it’s free, so there’s no harm in giving it a try. [ProHDR; iTunes App Store]

TiltShift

TiltShift is a little less practical than Pano and ProHDR, but if you like tilt shift photography, it’s a fun choice for your iPhone photography collection. If you’re not familiar, tilt shift photography is made possible by special lenses that use tilt to achieve a selective focus. This usually results in a miniaturization effect that’s much easier to see than explain, so check out this Flickr group for some examples. While TiltShift isn’t a proper substitute for the exceptionally expensive lenses you need to create official tilt shift photography, for a much cheaper price of $2 it comes close enough. TiltShift gives you plenty of effect options, like choosing different shapes for your bokeh (the rendering of out-of-focus areas of the photo, sometimes referred to as “background blur” even though that’s not fully accurate). [Tilt Shift; iTunes App Store]

Honorable Mentions

There are too many awesome photography apps for the iPhone to list here, but we want to give a few more their due. Here are some honorable mentions worth checking out if the short list isn’t enough to satiate your photographic hunger.

• Adobe Photoshop Express – Not the best of mobile photo editors, but it’s free and can handle a few important tasks.
• Blendcam – Blendcam is a photo app that lets you combine multiple exposures easily. It’s simple, focused, and free.
• OldBooth – OldBooth is a $2 app that takes old-fashioned photos. Beyond the aging effects, you can add new hairstyles to make your subject appear to be from a given era.
• Comic Touch – Comic Touch is a photo manipulation app that lets you distort faces in funny ways, add comic-style captions, and email your creations to your friends. $3.
• PhotoCurves / Free – PhotoCurves adds the popular curves color and tone alteration tool to your iPhone. The free version only allows you to work in the RGB colorspace. $2 for the full version will get you CMYK and CIELAB as well.
• Polarize – Poloraize is a free app that generates Polaroid-style photos on your iPhone. You can write on them, too!
• PhotoCalc – If you’re more of a pro, PhotoCalc won’t actually take or manipulate photos, but it will help you calculate exposure reciprocation, depth of field, and flash exposure for your D/SLR.
• Animoto – If you’re looking to make photo slideshows, Animoto is one of the best apps for the task. The app is free, but you can do more with a pro account.

Did we miss any great photo apps you love? Let’s us know in the comments!

Send an email to Adam Dachis, the author of this post, at adachis@lifehacker.com.

Traveling at 415km/h, Shanghai’s latest bullet train has smashed the previous record held by the country last year, by 21km/h. It services the Shanghai to Hangzhou route, which are about 202km apart.

It may be super speedy, but according to locals it’s going to be super pricey too, with the fares costing double what normal trains cost. But what price is getting to the destination in half the time it normally would take? Seemingly, 100 Yuan (about $US15) for a first-class ticket. Sounds like chips to us, but apparently a fare on the slower train is around $US7 in price—a much more palatable price.

Commuters must wait until late October, which is when the new line will open, and when women standing on train platforms with wet hair will suddenly feel the whoosh of a train whizzing past, drying them out. [IB Times via PopSci]

Image Credit: Occam

The most thrilling Microsoft product in years was killed before it ever officially existed. One of its most awesome services elicits more snickers than nods. Microsoft isn’t even in the mobile space right now. Redwood, we have a problem.

Courier:, simultaneously acknowledged and aborted in a bloody mess. Zune, a laughingstock that is in fact fantastic. Microsoft, the world’s most famous software company, effectively sat out of smartphones for the last year (to be charitable) while it carried Windows Phone 7 to term, allowing Apple and Google to divvy up the spoils of the new frontier. It’s a sad, sad turn of events.

But it’s fixable. Microsoft just needs to act like a software company again. All of these amazing things Microsoft creates – like Courier and Zune – and necessary-if-not-so-awesome-things (Office): Develop them for other platforms. In other words, Courier should be an iPad and Windows Phone (Tablet?) app. Zune should be an iPhone and Android and webOS and BlackBerry and Windows Phone app. Why aren’t there official Office apps for the iPhone and BlackBerry again?

Why should Microsoft deliver some of its most incredible creations to enemy platforms? It’s the Kindle model, stupid. The iPad is Kindle’s best worst frenemy. Even though the iPad competes against the plastic, E-Ink Kindle, the iPad is also perhaps the most fabulous delivery vehicle for Kindle the service – a huge part of the reason I stick with Kindle is because I know I can use it on basically any device I own. So, even though the iPad, with its monster sales, could eat into Kindle’s massive ebook marketshare if it was solely a competitor, Amazon neutralised the threat in part by co-opting the larger platform for its own service.

The same principle could work just as neatly for Microsoft: Co-opt iOS and Android to push its own software and services while building the new Windows Phone from nothing. Realistically, a current iPhone owner isn’t going to switch to Windows Phone next month. But if they’re an Xbox Live member who allows themselves to get hooked on ZunePass because they’re able to use it on the iPhone with an unlimited streaming app, much like Rhapsody or Mog—it’s suddenly a little easier to switch to Windows Phone in the near future. In the meantime, there’s another 100 million devices that can suddenly use Zune and see that it’s awesome, or 10 million people who can use Courier (albeit, as an iPad app) and become hopelessly addicted to it. Oh, and hey look, Microsoft does make great software.

Xbox Live, on the other hand, is trickier. It’s Microsoft’s halo brand (no pun intended). There aren’t so many Microsoft fanboys; but there are tons of Xbox fanboys. I’d love Live on the iPhone, like a lot of other people. But, it is an ace in the hole for Windows Phone. That, well, they maybe shouldn’t give up. It’s a reason to switch. Then again, gamers are still a minority compared to say, Office users.

Oh hey! Remember when Apple announced Microsoft Office and IE would come to Macs?

Back then, Apple needed Microsoft. Everyone’s platform did, really. So badly that Apple agreed, as part of the deal, to make Internet Explorer the Mac’s default browser. The crowd heckled. But now, it’s not quite so one-sided.

The rub, for Microsoft, is that everybody else—Google, Apple, whoever—is making it really easy to ditch them. As of now, going back to Microsoft is painful; inertia works against you. Microsoft should make it as frictionless as possible, so slippery you can slide right back into Microsoft’s services like you never left. Letting me have ZunePass on my iPhone, and Courier on my iPad—connected to an amazing cloud service like KIN (RIP)—is how to make that happen. Microsoft, and the products it excels at, on every device I use.

The iPhone and iPod touch are seriously mainstream. They’ve got the momentum and the marketshare, while Microsoft has basically nothing right now. In the same position, Apple sucked it up by putting iTunes on Windows, and made out pretty goddamn handsomely. Otherwise, well, I’m not using them at all right now. Just like a whole hell of a lot of other people.

*this article makes an exception to its point in the case of Internet Explorer

Previously relegated to the Google Toolbar and Feedburner, Google URL Shortener finally has a web site of its own.

Google URL Shortener (Goo.gl) now has a simple web interface where you input a URL and receive a shorter one. Nothing revolutionary here, but in addition to keeping track of your previously shortened URLs Google’s touting the following:

Stability: We’ve had near 100% uptime since our initial launch, and we’ve worked behind the scenes to make goo.gl even stabler and more robust.
Security: We’ve added automatic spam detection based on the same type of filtering technology we use in Gmail.
Speed: We’ve more than doubled our speed in just over nine months.

Here’s an added bonus tip from Googler Matt Cutts: if you add .qr to the end of any goo.gl-shortened URL, you get a QR code instead of the URL. For example: http://goo.gl/LFwS.qr

But if you’re not into the website, there’s always the handy goo.gl Chrome extension, or this goo.gl-supporting Firefox extension.

Google URL Shortener [via Google Social Web Blog]

Republished from Lifehacker

Ouch! It really stings to see the curvaceous spectacles that car designers can come up with, only to then find out the resulting electric speedsters are either far too expensive or nowhere near becoming a reality. Latest in this group of four-wheeled objects of desire is Jaguar’s C-X75, which roars from 0 to 60mph in 3.4 seconds, cranks out 780bhp courtesy of a quartet of electric motors and a pair of micro gas turbines, and reaches a screaming 205mph at its absolute zenith. You can go for 68 miles just on electric juice or 560 if you let the gasworks recharge the Li-ion battery pack on the go. So it’s gorgeous inside and out, it comes with swan doors, high-res LCD screens and an aluminum body, and it has less chance of being on sale than a dodo sandwich. Yep, it’s an electric supercar alright. See the C-X75 on video after the break.

No, this incredible image is not a Photoshop montage, and that’s not Batman’s plane. It’s a Qantas Dash 8 Q 400, a twin-propeller passenger aeroplane passing in front of the Moon in Australia. This is how it was taken:

Today, I achieved something I have wanted to do for a considerable length of time: A plane crossing the moon.

Everyday this Qantas Dash 8 Q 400 flys over our country property,always at 5.30 pm, without fail—I have watched it fly ‘through’ the moon a few times.

Today, the moon was at the ‘right’ phase-approx in line with the planes flight path. So I set up gear (I have done this drill quite a few times!)

I saw the plane along way of and thought ‘no-its not going to hit’,I stayed beside scope just in case,then as it got closer,I could see “it was going to line up!”

My palm started to sweet—buck fever. I only want to pull the trigger when I knew the plane was in the centre of the moon. I got my wish!

The shot was taken in South East Queensland at 5.30pm on September 16. Chris – the photographer – used a Vixen 103 ED refractor on a Vixen GP mount, guiding by a Vixen SS2K. His camera was Canon 450D at 1/250s, set on ISO200.

One shot in a million, indeed. [Ice In Space via APOD]

Starting this morning, Facebook have begun rolling out their Places services across Australia, following the US, UK, Canadian and Japanese launches.

If you want to access the service, you can get to it through the Facebook iPhone app or via the mobile site.

Facebook were keen to stress the full privacy control, with check-ins defaulted to friends only unless your master setting is everyone, and minors won’t appear in posts, apparently.

Echoing the opinions of Francis Ford Coppola and Roger Ebert, Simon Pegg took to Twitter today to voice his opinions on 3D movies. Even 3D porn was under fire: “Could you seriously masturbate knowing you look like the nutty professor?”

Comics writer Mark Millar sparked Pegg’s Twitter tirade, after tweeting “Please don’t force Nolan to direct Batman in 3d, Warner Bros. REAL LIFE is 3D. It’s not a novelty anymore.”

Nolan isn’t exactly a fan of 3D, having said recently that “on a technical level, it’s fascinating. But on an experiential level, I find the dimness of the image extremely alienating.”

After retweeting Millar’s tweet on the subject, Pegg then coughed out 10 tweets on his concerns about the future of indie movies, the cinemas’ restrictions on showing 3D movies, and like Ebert said, how 3D is just an excuse to charge more money. If you missed them, here they are in chronological order:

1. simonpegg 3D used in films not aimed at children is like seeing someone you respect trying too hard. Like witnessing your dad in leather trousers. 28 Sep 2010 from TweetDeck

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

1. simonpegg 3D has it’s place and it’s fun but it’s a variation not an evolution. Cinemas refusing to show 2D trails with 3D films is worrying. 28 Sep 2010 from TweetDeck

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

1. simonpegg It’s like a cinema in 1979 refusing to show the trailer for Manhattan because it’s in black and white. 28 Sep 2010 from TweetDeck

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

1. simonpegg I’m in three 3D movies and am very excited to be so but there is a growing propensity to convert 2D into 3D just to charge more at the door. 28 Sep 2010 from TweetDeck

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

1. simonpegg Sorry about that, I was venting. Where was I? Ah yes, whatever happened to white dog poo? 28 Sep 2010 from TweetDeck

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1. simonpegg I take back my first point because I can think of exceptions, Avatar, Piranha. It’s fun and more credible now but it is not the next step. 28 Sep 2010 from TweetDeck

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1. simonpegg I’m just a little concerned that the rise of the marketing machine as the executive power in modern film making will mean the death of it. 28 Sep 2010 from TweetDeck

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1. simonpegg What about 3D porn? Could you seriously masturbate knowing you look like the nutty professor? Actually don’t answer that. 28 Sep 2010 from TweetDeck

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1. simonpegg I loved Avatar by the way to those who missed my point. 28 Sep 2010 from TweetDeck

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Image Credit: _Silence on MySpace

Fighting international cyber-terrorism isn’t easy, but it’s a mission on which we can all agree, right? Not so fast.

Russia has been pushing a proposal in The United Nations agency for information technology, which describes the greatest cyber-threat not as hacking or stealing but as using the Internet to spread ideas that might undermine a country. Russia wants any such use of the Internet classified as “aggression,” and hence illegal under the UN Charter.

Sounds like China right? Yes, but check out this awfully teal map of countries that agree. It seems that a lot of the world seems more aligned with the Chinese view of controlling any information that may be considered subversive than they’re aligned with the high-minded Western ideals of freedom of speech and access to information. Most notably they include the other BRICs: India, Brazil and Russia. In fact, it’s Brazil that has asked Google to remove more content from the Web than any other nation this year. Brazil made more than double the requests of the next closest country, Libya.

NPR covered the story this morning, but it’s not a new shift in thinking. Russia has actually tried to introduce this information-arms-control-like agreement every year since 1998. So why do we only jump up and down about China? Presumably, under Russia’s proposition, Iran could hold Twitter accountable for giving people the ability to change their avatars to green or any Middle Eastern country could hold Facebook accountable for providing a platform by which people de-radicalize potential suicide bombers.

It’s a delicate issue for the US diplomatically and inside the US– way bigger than “Googlegate” because, well, I refer you again to the map. The issue doesn’t seem to be about different political systems, but rather different levels of stabilization in more chaotic emerging markets. Near-unfettered Internet freedoms aren’t always as high a priority in these countries, not because they’re evil, but because there are more pressing problems of gun violence, terrorism, or a paucity of food, water, jobs and basic infrastructure.

I usually try not to get into a lather about protecting Internet freedoms in other countries, because I don’t think it’s the job of private sector tech companies who are supposed to be international to act as tools to enforce Western-style democracy. Freedom and democracy are two different things. Some “democratic” countries I’ve reported in are more repressive in day-to-day life than other authoritarian countries. In addition, I believe that Google would have done more good by staying in China and working within the system than pulling out with a pouty “We don’t like their laws” as Eric Schmidt said on the Colbert Report this week. (To which Colbert astutely asked how long did it took for Google to start disliking China’s laws.)

But this is something different. It’s not about whether other countries should be allowed to control what happens within their borders and whether US companies simply chose to do business there or not, based on local laws. At stake are new rules that would bring international United Nations justification to draw sovereign boundaries around many different Internets. At stake is making it OK to build powerful new Web 2.0 technologies like Facebook and Twitter at the borders of the Western world– not with an easy-to-circumvent Great Firewall but with internationally-accepted rules against freedom of information and expression.  Talk about unintended consequences in a debate we thought was about identity theft and hacking.

On a more crass, business note, this could have a chilling impact on US Internet companies expansion into lucrative emerging markets. So far China is the only country that’s developed larger audiences for its own homegrown Internet companies than US versions in almost every category. That makes not only political sense but business sense because China is so culturally and linguistically different and the market is so much more advanced in terms of entrepreneurship, venture capital and the wild-west IPO markets of Shanghai, Hong Kong and the new Startup Board in Shenzhen.

But so far, US companies do better in many categories in India and Indonesia– because the Internet has grown slower giving less opportunity for locals to build big companies and more challenges with monetization. When the percentage of the population online is this small, frequently the people online are city-dwelling, affluent multinational employees or office workers who also speak English, making the need for, say, a local-grown Hindi Facebook a lot less immediate. And on a platform like Twitter, there are even fewer cultural and language restrictions because the site is so simple, how people use it localizes it.

But comparatively isolationist countries like Russia and Brazil could easily fork off with a more local versions of sites dominating as their markets grow. It’s not hard to see how local, business pressures could drive this diplomacy around blocking ideas on Western sites– they way some people allege it already has in China. And–on a more banal level than the future of freedom in the world–that would be disastrous for older Web companies in the US counting on emerging markets to grow.

This problem is not going to go away– and not just because Russia appears to introduce it every year. By 2050, the US will be the only G7 nation that is still one of the largest nations in the world. Its testament to the sheer size and resilience of the “world’s only Superpower” that we’ll still be no. 2. At least we’ll still have a strong say in the way the world runs. But sharing power with modern, emerging markets that have had a totally different history and experience with the 20th century will likely take the bulk of the 21st century to figure out– especially when it comes to border-less technology issues like the environment and the Internet.

I criticized Groupon last week for running too fast with its international strategy before it had stabilized its lock on the US market. But the flipside of that argument is that at least Groupon executives are getting a better picture of what the Internet will look like in this new world.

A 17-year old Australian is taking responsibility for unwittingly causing yesterday’s Twitter bug. While the teen didn’t directly bring the flood of spam and porn retweets, he burst open the dam. I guess that passes for precociousness these days?

The Melbourne-based high school student exposed the security flaw that created the havoc when he tweeted onMouseOver Javascript code. It was an experiment, according to the teen, that more unsavoury elements quickly identified as a way to do this to anyone who accessed Twitter.com:

You can’t really blame the kid for his idle curiosity; if anything it forced Twitter to patch a vulnerability before something truly malicious took advantage of it. Let’s hope we’re so lucky next time. [AFP]

If you’re staying in a miserable hotel, you’re entitled to post a bad review of it. But as a British couple recently learned, you should probably wait until you’re checked out to write it. Or they’ll check you out forcefully.

Adrian Healey and girlfriend Sherrie Andrews, both 33, were taking a holiday in resort town Blackpool, England, where they booked a room at the Golden Beach Hotel. It was Andrews’ first holiday since having been diagnosed with cancer some 18 months earlier.

On their first night there, Healey recounted to a local paper, they were denied access to their room because it was being re-carpeted. They say they didn’t complain, though they did ask for an extra towel.

On the second night, the manager stormed into their room, accused them of writing a negative review on the travel site TripAdvisor.com and threatened to call the police. The police soon arrived and the couple was asked to leave the property. The police encouraged them to look into getting a refund, but the hotel would not comply.

What’s unclear from USA Today‘s report of the incident is if Healey and Andrews did indeed write the review in the first place. Or why the manager suspected they had penned it. Perhaps a reference the aforementioned re-carpeting inconvenience? A strange tale, to be sure, but one that can serve as a parable: Always talk shit behind establishments’ backs. [USA Today]

Filmed using nothing but a Nokia N8 with attached CellScope microscope, what you’ll see here will blow your mind. The figurines were made using a 3D printer and had to be hand-painted using a microscope due to their small stature.

While we remain decidedly nonplussed about Nokia’s Symbian-running N8 phone, there’s no doubting the quality of photos that its 12MP camera is capable of taking. We haven’t seen much video taken on it though, largely due in part because it’s been delayed of delays.

Whatever the video quality, it’s unlikely anyone will be attempting to recreate UK animators’ Aardman’s stop-motion video, called “Dot”, simply because no one could come close to the level of cuteness seen here. The little figurine, (50 of them were made, measuring 8.89mm tall), is chased in an almost Mario-like platform world made from fabric. It will most certainly warm the cockles of your ticker – until I tell you that it was created as a viral video by Nokia themselves.

Nonetheless, it’s entered Aardman into the Guinness Book of World Records. [PopSci via TechRadar]

Stop-motion video:

The making-of:

Free TV channels set to lose sports rights when they won’t show them live

The government has reportedly decided that free to air stations will no longer be able to keep the rights to sporting events they do not broadcast live.  

According to the Sydney Morning Herald’s chief political correspondent Phillip Coorey, the decision was taken by media minister Stephen Conroy several months ago, but was parked until after the election. Coorey reports:

“They are awaiting sign-off by the cabinet and will be enacted by regulation before December 31, when the current anti-siphoning list expires.”

At present the rights to a long list of sporting events cannot be sold to subscription television, even if the free to air channels do not show it, or show only highlights or delayed coverage.

The intention of the legislation is to protect the public from having to pay a subscription in order to watch big sporting events. However, in many cases it has meant that live coverage has simply been unavailable.

The new “use it or lose it” rules would allow the free-to-airs to run sport on their digital channels, which is not currently allowed by the anti-siphoning legislation which was drawn up before the dawn of multichannelling.

One of the reasons the Ten Network launched its relatively low rating channel One was in anticipation of such a rule change.

I woke up from a nap in a fit of terror, realising mid-dream that I left the stove on for five hours.

A public utility waste of that degree is a rare occurrence in my home, but I do tend to leave shit on: lights in closets, electric kettles, lamps in the kitchen, towel warmers, irons, fans, vaporisers, iPod docks, rice cookers, heaters and more. Sometimes these things – like ceiling lights – are controlled by wall switches, and I just have to learn to be more conscientious or make little signs for myself or whatever. But if something’s plugged into outlets, look out. I’ve got Belkin Conserve Sockets fighting the good fight all over my house. Simple concept: The socket plugs in between the wall and your gadget; tap the button on top of the plug to start the power flow. After a user-selectable 30 minutes, three hours or six hours, the thing shuts off. Boom.

It has particular utility for things I need on for longer than a few minutes and less than a full day – basically the stuff I need on for that perfect zone of duration where forgetting about them is probable. There’s the dehumidifier I use to speed the drying of my wetsuit in the garage and the towel warmer I flip on before surf sessions. The Conserve is also good things that I would ordinarily unplug after using to avoid vampiric draw. Like the Sonos music systems in have in spare rooms – I don’t use them very much, but they use about five watts an hour while sleeping. I’ve got these things on conserve timers too, set to six hours each. The lamp over my food prep area in the kitchen is only on for 30 minutes.

There’s no display to show how much time is left but I prefer it this way for the sake of simplicity and cost. I only need to know that, eventually, whatever I’ve got plugged into it will be off. But sometimes I wish the device was a bit more complex: Tapping the switch again restarts the timer, but I almost wish it would shut off the device entirely – once the Conserve is started, it has to run down its clock or be unplugged before it is shut it off.

If you never leave your stuff on by accident, you may not even understand why the Conserve Socket exists; My need for the conserve is tied up with my inability to break my bad habits. But the sense of security that comes with knowing there’s less I can do to screw up my electric bill is certainly worth my $US10. (Even if saving that much in electricity costs will take a few years, it’s is the principle that counts.)

[Belkin]

Home Mod is all about the biggest gadget any of us will ever hack.

Previously on Home Mod:
• Lighting the Yard
• Logitech Alert Security Camera Review
• The 21st Century Clapper
• The Tap Gets Smart

With 260,000 phones being sold daily, someone out there is still buying Nokia phones. But who? And more importantly, why? Is it familiarity? Affordability? A belief that nothing else available is as good – or as suitable – for them?

I was elected to write this post because I live in the UK – the landmass on the periphery of Nokia’s dominance. Funny thing is, I don’t think I personally know a single person who uses the Finnish company’s phones. Sure, I know people who used to use them – and happily – but those years are long gone.

Especially in England, many of our first phones were Nokia. Mine, back in 2002, was an 8310. I adored it for its small size and legion of colour options. My next phone was the Motorola RAZR; I remember fumbling with the new OS and button layout at first. Is it fear of the unfamiliar that’s stopping this invisible hoard from trying new phones with different OSes? If so, why is it mostly Europeans and Asians who seem to have a problem adopting a new OS?

Maybe some people just don’t care what phone they use. Believe me, they exist. Not everyone wants to tweet, send photos to their friends or listen to music. Some people just need to text and call – and anyone who remembers call quality on a Nokia will know the Finns excel there.

When asking my Twitter followers if any of them still use Nokia phones – and why – affordability was unsurprisingly one of the first points to be raised. In Europe, where most phones are free upfront on contract, it’s the monthly payments which are an issue. Most phones cost £30 ($50) a month in the UK, and nowadays, contracts are between 18 and 24 months long.

Nokia phones tend on the whole to be pretty cheap. Several networks sell phones like the 5230 and E63 for as little as £13 ($22) a month. These are nice phones! Sure, they’re a little old, but they were flagships when they came out. Some of the models are pricier at around £30 ($50), but generally, Nokia’s (slightly less intelligent) smartphones are a lot cheaper than the iPhone and the assorted Android and BlackBerry models.

Pay As You Go, as you’d expect, is even cheaper. In Asian countries, particularly India, a $300 phone is not an option. Phones such as the C1 and C2, with dual-SIM support, enable people to stay connected for less. They may not be able to update their Facebook statuses, but that’s not why they need a phone.

Nokias are very popular with the grey-haired set as well, a market that’s becoming increasingly more lucrative. There are more old people now – they’ve got the money and they want something that just works straight out of the box. Grandchildren can offer help all they want, but I know from setting up my oldies with phones, most of the time they just had them switched off, ready in case of emergency.

So tell me, readers – why do you choose to use a Nokia phone? Or why does your girlfriend, your dad or your next-door neighbour? When presented with so much choice nowadays – so many form factors, OSes, colours! – why is Nokia still only big in some places?

So this is what a Canon 5D Mark II looks like on the inside. This anatomy illustration was done by concept artist Mads Peitersen, who created similar illustrations for other popular devices as well. Peiterson tells us,

The idea was that these gadgets are becoming so advanced and cool today that we almost treat them as if they were alive. In a way users become attached to them. You kinda begin to see yourself as connected to these brands or gadgets. They almost become an extension of yourself or your hands.

The metaphor is that a really rather simple and very dead gadget gives people a feeling of being more present, more alive. And in this case, the camera even sees and captures life.

Maybe this is what a Zerg version of the Canon 5D Mark II might look like…

(via Gizmodo)

Image credit: Illustration by Mads Peitersen and used with permission

Grand Designs Australia to premiere in October

Home renovation program Grand Designs Australia will go to air October 21 – on XYZ Network’ s The Lifestyle Channel.

The announcement:

XYZnetworks’ The LifeStyle Channel today announced that GRAND DESIGNS AUSTRALIA will premiere exclusively on Thursday October 21 at 8.30pm.

A truly unique brand and a massive undertaking with a shooting period of over 12 months, Grand Designs Australia tells the stories of new homes and perhaps more importantly the Aussies who are building them. Based on the award-winning UK series, Grand Designs Australia will be the first international format of the critically acclaimed show.

“The LifeStyle Channel has been premiering this series since 2005 and it is consistently one of the channel’s most watched shows. Our viewers have been asking for an Australian version for some time and we are thrilled to be bringing them Grand Designs Australia,” said Nicole Sheffield, General Manager of the LifeStyle Channels. “The series is a massive undertaking and our biggest production commitment to-date. We have been following the incredibly ambitious and emotional journeys of our self-builders for over a year to bring their inspirational Australian stories to life.”

Grand Designs Australia charts the in-depth process of elaborate design projects undertaken by self-builders – from the initial details of blueprints, to the long and often arduous task of turning the designs into a practical living space.

No design is too ambitious when it comes to creating your dream home. But discovering the hard realities that complicate your plans can often be too much to bear. From rebuilding a labour of love in the Victorian bush after it was burnt to the ground in the Black Saturday bushfires; to transforming a tiny corner car park into a five level home in the urban jungle; and a cyclone proof, tropical tree house that is windowless and based on the shape of a 50 cent piece; Grand Designs Australia follows not only the growth of these unique homes, but the personal journeys of those building them.

The host is incredibly important to the show’s success and after an extensive search, leading Australian architect Peter Maddison was secured. With over 25 years experience his projects include a huge range of award-winning residential and commercial work. Peter has an in depth understanding of Australian architecture and our climate, culture and history.

“I am really enjoying hosting Grand Designs Australia,” said Peter Maddison. “As a practising architect I am fascinated by what I have witnessed travelling around Australia filming a rich and diverse range of Australian homeowners. Some are building their dream-home, some are living a nightmare. But every one of them has a unique story and drama.”

FremantleMedia Australia is producing the nine-part series for The LifeStyle Channel.

GRAND DESIGNS AUSTRALIA screens Thursdays at 8.30pm (aest) from October 21 on The LifeStyle Channel, FOXTEL and AUSTAR.

Source: XYZ Networks press release, mUmBRELLA

There’s a bit of a standoff going on when I arrive to interview Rob Brydon. The photographs are being taken in a working men’s club in east London, and I’m standing with Brydon saying my hellos when out of the corner of my eye I see the photographer advancing towards us, a sequined jacket in his outstretched arms. “Oh here it comes,” says Brydon in a voice that sounds as if it has seen it all before, showbiz highs, showbiz lows, the passing of several geological ages. “The novelty jacket. I can see where this is going.”

It’s momentarily confusing since Rob Brydon shares the same mellifluous Welsh sing-song as his most famous character, Uncle Bryn from Gavin and Stacey – a man with such a joyous enthusiasm for life that even reciting a shopping list he can sound like he’s just discovered the secret of eternal life. “Now you’ve probably never seen one of these,” he explains in an early episode as if he’s about to unveil the control deck on the Starship Enterprise. “It’s called a SAT NAV!”

Brydon, on the other hand, sounds like the headmaster who’s just discovered that you cheated in your chemistry exam: knowing. And just a bit disappointed. Still, he puts the jacket on, ever the professional. “Come on then!” he says and strides towards the set.

The standoff has passed. But Brydon has such a reputation for being “nice” – he’s never received any bad press, scarcely even a dud review – that it’s quite illuminating to know that he’s not entirely without edge. Because, of all the funny men on TV, there’s no one who seems purer or more childlike than Rob Brydon. He radiates a sort of old-fashioned innocence. And not just because of Uncle Bryn – it was a trait shared by Keith Barret, the melancholic Welsh cuckold who was the star of Marion and Geoff. Even when he’s playing himself, the Rob Brydon who crops up on programmes like QI, he has the joy and enthusiasm of a Welsh border collie.

It comes across, too, in his new BBC series The Rob Brydon Show, a mixture of chat, music, audience interaction and jokes, and while there are no novelty jackets, there is something of the old-fashioned variety host about the 45-year-old Brydon: the gentle humour, the courteous way he treats the audience. Even the set has a slightly old-fashioned air – there’s a comfortable armchair, a pot plant. There is, and there seems to be no other way of saying this, a certain Bryn-ness to it.

But then he’s never been one to deny his inner Bryn. “All the people I know who play characters become known for them – Peter Kay, Ricky Gervais, Steve Coogan – and sometimes they’ll do something and you think: ‘Ah, that’s just like Brian Potter. Or Alan Partridge.’ I think that what they do is recognise things in themselves. And that’s what you do, without sounding pretentious – you sort of paint with that. I don’t really lose myself in a character. I just try and see where the character and I meet up. I’m not that interested in trying to dazzle you by being unrecognisable. What I am interested in is telling a story effectively.”

Ruth Jones who, with James Corden, wrote the part of Bryn for Brydon in Gavin & Stacey, has known Brydon since she was 15 and they were at Porthcawl Comprehensive in Bridgend together. “The thing you have to remember with Rob,” she says, “is that he loves entertaining people. And it’s not that it’s necessarily an ego thing – he just absolutely gets a thrill from making people laugh.”

He really does have what used to be called the common touch. During our interview I’m treated to jokes, stories, anecdotes – it’s a relief, frankly, to meet a comedian who’s funny in real life – and this will-to-entertain also comes to the fore in The Trip, a three-part series for the BBC directed by Michael Winterbottom (Winterbottom is also cutting it as a feature film and will show it at the Toronto film festival). It reunites Brydon with Steve Coogan in the form of an improvised road trip around the Lake District and continues their relationship from A Cock and Bull Story, a dramatisation of Laurence Sterne’s “unfilmable” novel Tristram Shandy, also directed by Winterbottom. In that film Brydon played a character called Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan played a character called Steve Coogan. It’s the same conceit this time: Steve Coogan is Steve Coogan, who’s taken on a job as a celebrity restaurant reviewer (for the Observer, no less), and Rob Brydon is Rob Brydon, his friend. The result, says Brydon, “is quite a lot of uncomfortable moments”.

The script is almost wholly improvised. Winterbottom just gave them a subject – Coleridge, or missing their kids – and they talked. “We distance ourselves a bit,” Brydon explains. “For example, in it I just have one child who’s six months old and he had two teenage kids, whereas in reality he has one teenage daughter and I have four children of varying ages. So we wanted to make that distinction, but nonetheless we are Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.

“What you do is you exaggerate things. I do impressions all the time to annoy him,” he continues, “where in reality I don’t do that. If I did that, I’d be a lunatic, so some things are heightened. But some things aren’t changed very much at all.”

There’s a brilliant bit in the first episode where Brydon and Coogan have an impression-off, vying to do the best Michael Caine. And although he doesn’t do these voices the whole time I’m with him (I wouldn’t mind if he did – “A broadsheet journalist called my impressions ‘stunningly accurate’!” he shouts at Coogan in The Trip, and actually they are), he does slip into accents whenever he has something slightly awkward or contentious to say. Talking about his kids, for example, he slips into comedy Welsh. And he does treat me to a blast of his Richard Burton, richly vowelled and camply theatrical (“Oh, what a piece of work is a man!”).

In an interview with Steve Coogan, Coogan said of Brydon that he’s “always on”.

“Well, I’m certainly more on than Steve is,” says Brydon, “but Steve is remarkably not on. You would not think that he is who he is, except on the rare occasion when he wants to make you laugh. I like witty people, people who can be witty on the spot. And when you’re with Steve he won’t often try to make you laugh.”

Their relationship goes back years. Brydon is usually referred to as “Coogan’s protégé”, although he says that he hears that less these days. “But it wasn’t unfair. He championed Marion and Geoff and Human Remains and got them made.”

It was Marion and Geoff that provided Brydon’s first major role back in 2000, a show that he wrote, with Hugo Blick, and in which he played the only role, Keith Barret, a taxi driver whose wife has recently left him.

Coogan was the one who saw the brilliance of it, wasn’t he, I say. Did that change your life?

“Oh yes, yes, yes – 100%. Absolutely. I was doing voiceovers and stuff at the time, and I used to watch him and think: ‘That’s exactly the work I want to do.’ And then I kind of went on and did it.”

Brydon’s never struggled in the true actorly sense, however. He’s always made a very solid living, first as a DJ on Radio Wales in the 90s and then doing voiceovers. You’ve probably heard him a thousand times and not realised it. He’s been an English-accented continuity announcer for the BBC, the voice of Toilet Duck, of Sainsbury’s. He’s done adverts in a Scottish accent in Scotland, in an Irish one in Ireland.

The voiceovers kept him afloat, but it wasn’t the success he’d always dreamed of. Growing up in Baglan, just outside Port Talbot (a vast panorama of the town’s steelworks forms a backdrop to The Rob Brydon Show), which has produced both Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins (and more recently Michael Sheen, with whom he’s friends), it was impossible not to notice that acting could be a very good career indeed.

Did it inspire you? “Oh yes, absolutely. Because you think somebody who’s come from here has done it. You read a lot of stories about people who grew up in Anonymousville who say: ‘Nobody from there had ever done that.’ Whereas I always had encouragement from my family. I never had: ‘Oh you want to be an actor, ugh!’ I always had: ‘Oh you want to be an actor? Brilliant! Go for it.’”

Every year the school put on a big production musical, and he and Ruth Jones were always the leads. And there was never any doubt in anyone’s minds, she says, that he’d be successful. However, his break was a long time coming. “For years I thought it would happen; I believed it would for a long time,” says Brydon. And then you lose faith.” When it finally did, the timing could not have been worse: just as Marion and Geoff was taking off his marriage broke down.

He had three young children and he doesn’t talk about his divorce because “the children are all of an age”, but Keith Barret’s hapless melancholia perhaps provides an inkling. In any case, the experience is still, he says, “a huge, huge part of my life”.

And why, perhaps, he’s so unbothered these days about pursuing ever greater “success”. “That is probably true. Because there I was at that time the most successful I’d ever been, but I wasn’t happy. I think this is the thing. I’d just been up to get the comedy award and I was worried I was going to burst into tears. And nobody knew. It’s made me think that being successful in your career is not the route to happiness.”

He’s since remarried and had another child, Tom, two. And he’s an obvious homebody. He tells me how he did the LA thing, flew out to “meetings” – “And I remember I stayed at the Mondrian on Sunset, and I just got quite depressed. Because the kids, the time difference – I felt so far away, and I didn’t like it. My Welsh friend, the actor Steve Speirs, he was out there and he came round to the hotel, and I had this beautiful room with floor-to-ceiling windows and I’d just bought this Neil Diamond album which was quite introspective and Steve came in and said: ‘What the fuck are you doing? Stood by this window, you’ve got this depressing music on, you’re telling me you miss your children. Good God, man! It’s not good for you.’ So we went to Universal Studios and did the tour together.”

There’s a definite Odd Couple aspect to the Coogan-Brydon pairing; onscreen they riff, they compete, they put each other down. Is that what you’re like in real life? “No, onscreen there’s very little warmth, which there is in real life. Also, we don’t spend that much time with each other really. I don’t see him from one year to the next often. But when we do see each other we slot in very easily and it’s very nice. We’re not the big buddies that we are sometimes made out to be. But when we are together we do have a nice rhythm and empathy with each other, and it works.”

It’s interesting, I say, his take on your career. All that stuff in The Trip where he’s irritated by you doing panel shows. Is there an element of truth in that? “There is an element of truth in his disdain for that. But it’s very exaggerated. I would imagine in life that he doesn’t care that much. But he doesn’t do those shows. He would never do those shows. But whereas in The Trip it irks him, in reality he’d go: ‘Well, that’s Rob’s choice.’”

Because as well as The Rob Brydon Show and The Trip, he also has his own BBC panel show, Would I Lie To You?, currently in the middle of its fourth series. And you do it because you enjoy it?

“I always say it’s not what you do but how you do it. A good panel show is a perfectly valid thing. And I think Would I Lie To You? is a perfectly good, warm-hearted, sharp, funny half-hour’s entertainment when you’ve had a hard day and you’re sitting down in front of the television. But many panel shows are appalling, with people who aren’t funny, who aren’t witty, who are confident and loud and that’s about it… But I did make a conscious decision four years ago that I would just do what I liked.”

What did you do before then? “Before that you slightly think: ‘Well, what will people think? If I present a show, they won’t accept me as an actor.’ And I stopped thinking that way: your tastes change, and what you want changes.”

What do you want now, then, that you didn’t want before?

“When you’re a kid, I think you want to be a film star. And I’m not as enamoured with that any more. The reality of that life is a lot of travel, and a lot of being away, which is impractical because I have four children, so I don’t want to be away that much, not the other side of the world away. And when you experience the reality of making films, you realise that they’re not all that.” It’s a persona he plays up in The Trip. That he is the devoted family man, happy to be doing what he’s doing, whereas Coogan is the frustrated Hollywood wannabe.

There’s something quite refreshing about Brydon’s lack of ambition. He says the sorts of things that most people won’t actually say, even if they’re true. That he’s been “a bit of a money whore”. His reputation in his family is that he works all the time and does loads of corporate gigs “because I got divorced, and that had certain financial implications”. And how he doesn’t seem, well, as bothered about work as some of his contemporaries. He shrugs, and on his face is the sort of slightly quizzical expression that Uncle Bryn might use when confronted with the limitless mysteries of the universe. “I just don’t seem to care as much.”

It’s a masterful statement. The opposite of almost everything popular TV stands for: an affront to the MasterChef “passion test”, an insult to the entire ideological framework of The X Factor. And the type of thing that no one has ever said to me in an interview, ever. Celebrities are not meant to be lackadaisical. “Go, Rob!” I want to say. Or, you know, put your feet up and have a nice cup of tea instead. Whatever.

The Rob Brydon Show is on BBC2 on 17 September, 10pm