First, let’s just take as a given that there are people who are willing to plan their day around ice cream. Second, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that there might be a small cultural divide between those of us who spend our days fanatically trying out all the new stuff on the internet, and those that spend their days making delicious treats for children – so allow me to introduce the two of you:

Twitter: Mr. Whippy is a purveyor of soft serve ice cream, who roams the streets of New Zealand in search of children (ok, adults) that like ice cream.

Mr. Whippy: Twitter is a website where you post short messages to anyone who is interested in following you. You put where you’re at, or what you’re doing, and anyone who is interested can be updated in real-time. Think of it as a sort of public text message that anyone can receive. You can post a message (called a “tweet”) by sending a text to the service, where it will be broadcast for everyone. So ideally, Mr. Whippy will post something like “I’ll be in North Hagley, near the rugby fields for the next few hours.” Moments later, I’ll look at my phone, see your “tweet” and ride several miles out of the way I was intending.

Ok, now that we’re sorted on the introductions, let’s get you set up:

First, go to Twitter.com and get signed up. Pick a cool name like “ChchWhippy” or something like that – something people can remember. Add a little photo of a cone or the truck to flash it up a bit.

Next, grab your mobile and text “Start” to 8987, a special number just for Twitter that works on Telecom and Vodafone. Twitter will reply with a series of prompts. Tell it the cool name you came up with in the fist step and your password and you’re done. Try it out by texting “Who loves Mr. Whippy!?” to 8987. Save that number to your phone so you can post to Twitter every time you move the truck.

That’s it. Tell your friends to follow you, put a sign with your Twitter name on the truck or just let word spread. Soon, all the Mr. Whippy fans who use Twitter will be following you, and when they need a Whippy fix, they’ll know where to go.

Advanced Option:
If you really want to get nerdy, you can get a fancy internet-enabled phone like an iPhone or Blackberry. With one of those you can download a third-party apps like “Tweetie 2,” “TweetDeck” or “UberTwitter” that will let you attach a photo or GPS coordinates to your tweet, so people don’t even need to know their way around town to find the truck.

If you do me this one little favor, I promise to start bringing cash on bike rides.

Most libraries offer Audiobooks on CD for checkout. Some charge a small rental fee, and you’re limited to what you find on the shelf, or what is within reach of the library’s lending network. Despite listening to plenty of Audiobooks, I’ve checked out exactly zero of them from the library. If you’ve lifted one off the shelf lately, you no doubt noticed the size and weight of the thing. If you’re planning to walkabout town listening to a tome like the unabridged audio version of Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat,” be sure to bring a backpack so you’re prepared to carry the boxed set of fifteen full length CDs. Include in your load a discman and a quiver of batteries, and you’ll soon be toting around a few kilos. You’ll probably find the hard cover version to be more portable. This seems ridiculous when you consider that even a long book like Friedman’s can be represented by about 300MB of data, which would fit 10 times over on a memory card small enough to swallow.

I haven’t bought a CD in years, nor have I any idea where I might find my antique discman, so what I really want to do is get Audiobooks the same way I get podcasts and music: by downloading them from the web and syncing them onto my iPod or any device that plays MP3s. While podcasts are generally free, Audiobooks delivered digitally can be quite dear. I’ve used services like Audible.com, where you can download an Audiobook for between US$7 and US$27. Audible has a subscription scheme where you can buy credits at a discount, but if you really love to listen you can easily go through an Audiobook in a few days, leaving you to wait for your credits to arrive at the beginning of the month, or just leaving you to pay full price. The system works well, but your Audiobook habit can quickly become more expensive than Sky TV or your internet connection itself, especially when you consider that few people plan to listen to an Audiobook more than once.

That’s why I was very excited to learn that the Christchurch City Library now has an OverDrive Audiobook Collection. If you’re not familiar with the system, it’s pretty straightforward. You go to your library’s website, and click through to their OverDrive portal. There you can browse the collection and download what you like, sync to your iPod or MP3 player, or even burn it to the aforementioned mountain of CDs.

OverDrive Media Console on Windows

To get started you’ll need to download OverDrive Media Console. OverDrive uses a proprietary player, which is necessary to manage and enforce the lending period, as that kind of functionality isn’t built into any of the media players you may already have installed, such as Windows Media Player or iTunes. Once that’s ready, you can log into the catalogue with your library card and have a look through the available titles. If you see something you like, and it’s available, you can simply add it to your basket and click checkout, just as you would when buying anything online, except you’ll be asked to log in with your library card and pin. After checkout you’ll be prompted to download a file. This file is not actually your media, but a .odm file. Think of it as the ticket for your media files. Once downloaded, simply open this file with OverDrive Media Console, and the program will begin to download the Audiobook media. The media is broken into many parts, and you can begin listening as soon as the first part is downloaded. In most cases, you have a fortnight to listen to the title. When your time is expired, the title will be “returned” to the library, meaning it will be removed from your computer, whether you’re finished or not.

If your title is not available, you can place a hold on it, and you’ll be notified by email when the title becomes available. You’ll have a few days to check it out before it’s goes to the next person waiting on the list.

Publisher Restriction Key in OverDrive Catalogue

The system does have a few drawbacks. As a Windows Media Player-based solution, most titles are only available as Windows Media Audio (.wma) format files, which only playback on Windows PC’s. Those with Mac’s can use OverDrive’s new Media Console for Mac, but due to publishers’ restrictions, Mac users will have less titles to chose from. You can sync most of the .wma format files to a Windows Mobile-based phone, but not all titles are available to sync onto your iPod, and fewer are available to sync onto a non-iPod MP3 player or burned to a CD, which limits the usefulness for those of us that like to listen to an Audiobook for those long drives in the car. It should also be noted that if the catalogue indicates that the title is available for iPod, but not for Mac, that means you can use it only on an iPod formatted for a PC, so you won’t be able to use your Mac-format iPod as a workaround for lack of support on your Mac computer. The array of restrictions and caveats probably says more about the state of the publishing industry, and less about the OverDrive system or your library, but it’s something to be aware of before you check out an Audiobook, and it’s a mute point if you plan to listen on your Windows PC. Fortunately the OverDrive catalogue makes it as easy as possible to navigate the restrictions. Each title in the catalogue has a key of icons, indicating which titles are available for which platforms, so that you can see at a glance whether or not your title will be available for your needs.

Overall it’s a wonderful and modern use of the library’s classic mission, and a welcome addition to Christchurch City Libraries.

Map of the Southern Cross Cable

When your nation is an island in the South Pacific, the logistics of international communications are as complicated as they are critical to living and conducting business. First off, let me dispel a myth: we’re not connected by satellite, we’re connected by a cable. While high speed satellite communications are in the works for places like Tonga and Vanuatu, it is still faster to handle the internet traffic of four million New Zealanders and 2.5 million visitors by undersea cable. New Zealand’s primary connection is a submarine cable system called The Southern Cross Network. It’s not actually one cable, but a loop of cables that goes through Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, Oregon, and back to Australia via California, Hawaii and New Zealand. The theory is that if one segment of the network goes down, due to an earthquake, storm or some other incident, traffic can be routed the other way around. Physically, submarine cable is smaller in diameter than your average coffee cup, but building and financing thousands of miles cable laying across the open ocean is the work of governments and Tier 1 ISPs, so it’s important to keep their investment in mind when you consider how this connection scheme effects retail pricing of internet connectivity for the end user.

Historically, government owned Telecom New Zealand has been the only player in New Zealand telecommunications. In 1990 Telecom was privatized and a sizable portion was bought by overseas investors, notably Ameritech (now known as AT&T) and Bell Atlantic (now known as Verizon). The privatization also allowed for the entrance of another player into the New Zealand telecommunications market, namely national and foreign-backed New Zealand upstart Clear Communications, which was subsequently merged into Australian firm Telstra, and is now known in New Zealand as TelstraClear. Skip ahead twenty years and a lot of regulatory changes and you’ll find that most people in New Zealand are still connected one way or another through Telecom, though often through a reseller of some sort. Still, the market is opening up with the advent of high-speed wireless communications and expansion of cable TV networks. For many people, wireless 3G service is sufficient for their browsing needs, and is their only internet connection. In some areas, TelstraClear is expanding cable television service, and offering broadband over that system.

While the market is less more open than it was pre-1990, there remains a premium on international traffic which must travel through the Southern Cross link. As such, some retail pricing schemes in New Zealand charge a different rate for international traffic. This is of particular importance to those of us who work in the web design and development space, as it is advantageous to put websites targeted at New Zealanders on networks on the New Zealand side of the Southern Cross, as I don’t want my user be charged extra to access my site. This illustrates a minor glitch in the freedom of the NZ internet market, as users aren’t generally aware of where their data is coming from. While a .nz domain name is a solid indicator that a website is targeted at NZ users, it does not mean that the site is hosted in New Zealand.

A Screenshot of Flagfox for Firefox

To determine that, you’d need to use a plugin such as FlagFox or do a trace route on a site to determine it’s physical location. While it’s a great idea for anyone on such a broadband plan to do so, I don’t see the practice becoming widespread, especially since a website can be created from multiple hosts, or change hosts, or have mirrors around the world, which might back each other up as usage changes. Since ISPs aren’t able to reliably encourage national data use like you might be able to with telephone service, many providers simply charge a monthly fee for broadband including all traffic national and international, limited by total traffic. Right now there are no unlimited (uncapped) broadband packages on offer. A typical internet pack might offer 40GB per month on a full speed ADSL2+ connection for $60 per month. Other plans may have you paying for each megabyte, with varying rates for overseas traffic. The University of Canterbury, for example, has a rate scheme that varies depending on the time of day and whether you’re accessing national or international data.

Those of us from North America might find the lack of an unlimited internet plan and universities that charge students to use the internet in the library as rather shocking, but a Kiwi traveling in the United States or Canada might be equally surprised to learn that free wifi is ubiquitous in most cities. Some New Zealand coffee shops offer scratch-off cards with a passcode for an hour of free internet, while their North American counterparts often leave their wifi running day and night, freely available to anyone in range of the access point.

What this means for the immigrant is that internet service is going to cost more in New Zealand than you’re used to back home. For the tourist it means that you’ll be paying extra for internet in your hotel room, or plugging coins into a machine at an internet cafe. You also may want to check if your mobile device is unlocked, or can be unlocked, so you can use it on a prepay data plan during your visit. For the webmaster it means you’ll have to think about where you choose host sites and the location of your audience, so that they may access your site as cheaply as possible. To the web designer it means that it’s probably a good idea for your website to be serving a mobile version of your website branded to match the standard site, as more people are getting information about your business through smart phones and similar devices since using your notebook by roaming onto public wifi may cost more per month than a getting a data plan for your phone.

Essentially, bandwidth in North America is like tap water; it’s so cheap, it’s not worth the effort of charging for it – in New Zealand, that is definitely not the case.