In its current form the kindle is just too one dimensional.

Much of the Christmas kindle hype came from newspapers, which have a vested interest in promoting the platform. In fact the whole of the publishing industry, including books and magazines, is hoping it takes off.

Don’t rush out and buy an early version, is my view.

The kindle needs to be more than just a reader; it needs to be part of an integrated communications device, which is where Apple and Google are heading.

Instead of creating hardware to read digital books, software will be developed that works on a range of platforms.

An electronic book or newspaper should be readable on a mobile phone, laptop computer or PC.

The hardware will improve over time and there will be more options in terms of size and capabilities.

I like the size of mini laptops, but they are still a little bulky to carry around and pull out on a crowded train.

I envisage something in the size and shape of a kindle that’s also a computer, phone and webcam with wireless internet connectivity.

Apple and HTC are both tipped to announce highly portable tablet computers in coming weeks.

It makes sense that Google and HTC might produce something that uses the Chrome operating system. If it includes mobile phone capability it will be a real winner.

As for the current kindle, it’s likely to go the way of the Palm handheld devices before they morphed into phones. Remember them?

Beware if purchasing on eBay from overseas that Google integration may not be automatically included with the phone.

Users will have to install a new rom, which isn’t easy.

The reward will be a lightweight, technically advanced phone with heaps of features and access to the growing Android market.

Opera Unite allows users to share data such as photos, music, notes and other files.

It puts the power of a web server in a browser, supposedly giving greater privacy and flexibility than other online services.

Admittedly, I’m yet to test it, but I don’t like the idea of opening up my desktop to the world, even with appropriate security controls.

And I wonder about the feasibility of sharing files when my PC is turned off, as it is for more than 16 hours a day.

I do like however, the idea of being able to access my own files from remote locations.

A proper review will follow when I’ve tested Opera Unite. Meanwhile, feedback from people who have tried it is welcome.

ACMA has reportedly threatened popular discussion forum Whirlpool with fines of $11,000 a day over a link published in its forum to another page that’s been blacklisted.

Child porn? Recipes for bombs or suicide pills? No, the link is to an anti-abortion website.

The blacklist is expected to widen if the Federal Government goes ahead with its controversial internet filtering scheme.

Apart from extreme acts of pornography and violence, I don’t support censorship.

George Bernard Shaw said: “Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.”

Wikileaks is a site that has had links to it banned from Australia.

In a press release, the whistleblowers wiki says the first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship.

It’s revealed the decision to ban the links was made by the “Content Assessment Section” of the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Wikileaks’ crime was publishing lists of banned sites from Thailand and Denmark.

Electronic Frontiers Australia has condemned the latest development.

“We note that, not only do these incidents show that the ACMA censors are more than willing to interpret their broad guidelines to include a discussion forum and document repository, it is demonstrably inevitable that the Government’s own list is bound to be exposed itself at some point in the future. The Government would serve the country well by sparing themselves, and us, this embarrassment,” the group says.

“The spin is starting to wear thin. It can no longer be denied that the blacklist targets a huge range of material that is legal and even uncontroversial. Politically controversial material will be blocked, as we have seen today. As time goes on, pressure will only mount on the Government to expand the list, while money and effort are poured into an enormous black box that will neither help kids nor stem the flow of illegal material.”

Australia has never had a bill of rights and does not have guaranteed liberties in the constitution. However, the liberty of free speech has always been assumed and exercised.

It is alarming that our government has now clamped down on the capacity for people to access information and discuss ideas.

Apparently it’s been a Labs feature for a year, but today was the first time I had seen it linked with Google News Australia.

Since Pauline Hanson is the lady of the moment, I entered her name for a quotes search. The results were quite revealing:

A tremulous Hanson told the Herald that she was like “our diggers going to fight at Gallipoli for our freedom and for our rights”.

“It accuses me of being a person without conscience or ethics, a person of despicable character,” Ms Hanson wrote.

Asked what had happened to electoral funds she had received, Ms Hanson said: “You can go and do your interview, because this is going over and over … I’m tired of answering these questions.”

The search results include links to the source, making it a useful tool.

Many people regularly visit several sites, eg Twitter, Flickr, Blogger and so on.

Aggregating a person’s online presence is not new. FriendFeed, in particular, has grown in popularity.

A self-hosted option is new, however. Sweetcron is in public beta. Anyone can access the code and install it on their own website if they have PHP5 and MySQL.

You can see an example on my site here.

Sweetcron enables users to import feeds from their blogs, photo sites and discussion forums to be visible on a single page.

You will need some coding knowledge to modify the theme. Apart from that, it was very simple to install and get running.

The big improvement that I’ve noticed is the dashboard, which was one of my major gripes with 2.6.

Everything is much easier to find and most parts of the admin area can be accessed with one click.

Great work!

Mollom has proved very effective on several of my sites.

When new content is analysed by Mollom’s text-analysis filter, and Mollom is unsure if it is spam, it asks the user to answer a CAPTCHA challenge.

This challenge-response procedure does not block human users.

For WordPress users it significantly reduces the amount of spam in moderation. Akismet and Defensio make (a small number of) mistakes and a blog owner needs to check the comments marked as spam.

Mollom lets dodgy-looking comments through if a CAPTCHA check is passed.

I’ve had two spam comments survive the scrutiny, presumably entered by people who bothered to make a manual entry.

I’d rather deal with the odd contrived comment than trawl through moderated spam.

A beta version is currently available for testing and I’ve been using it at www.gorey.com.au.

Features include:

• Post revisions (save a history of edits);
• Support for Google Gears;
• Word count on posts;
• Enhanced plugin management;
• Ability to move the config file to a higher directory.

WordPress is the easiest blogging software to use and highly configurable given its large user community.

There have been some security concerns in the past and some users were unhappy with cosmetic changes in version 2.5.

The next release looks to be the best so far.

Nearly half (45 percent) preferring to use mobiles as their main voice communications.

According to the research, most consumers use their fixed-line and mobile phones as complementary services with fixed-line used when at home and for longer calls and mobiles when outside the home.

A small proportion of household consumers (around 10 percent) — “techno non-adopters” — do not have a mobile phone and choose to rely solely on their fixed-line phone for voice communications.

There is also an increasing proportion of consumers — “enthusiastic embracers” — who have or intend to replace their fixed-line phone service with other forms of voice communications. A quarter of household consumers indicated they would consider replacing their fixed-line service with another form of communication. Cost was the biggest factor in considering replacement, with many indicating they would replace their fixed-line if the price of mobile calls was reduced.

The report also found that despite the availability of converged technologies that offer both voice and data services on one device, such as 3G, VoIP and mobile email, most service replacement relates to fixed-line and mobile phone voice services. Although take-up of these converged technologies is low, consumers are starting to become aware and understand the benefits of these services.

Comment: I’d do away with a landline if I could get inexpensive wireless broadband or “naked” ADSL. The rental cost of landlines is ridiculous.