Author: Russell Phillips

  • Integrating Netflix into MythTV

    Well, MythTV launched in Australia today. I couldn’t have my wife trying to start/stop the MythTV frontend and poke around looking for web browsers, typing URLs and maximising windows and whatnot, so I quickly banged up a Netflix launch button for MythTV.

  • Every Automated Billing System Ever is Shit

    This is a part of the world that I don’t understand. There are so many companies out there who need to perform the simple task of measuring the service they provide and billing it at a set interval. I really don’t think I’m being naive when I say it’s a simple task – I’m a […]

  • On IPv6

    What the hell is IPv6, and why should I care? It’s the next generation of Internet protocol. You’re probably heard that the world has pretty much run out of IPv4 addresses. Sure, four billion sounded like a lot of endpoints when it was first drafted, but absolutely predicted this sort of growth. In layman’s terms, […]

  • DAB+: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

    Since the release of the Compact Disc in 1982, there has been a notable trend for multimedia to go digital. To be honest, I’m surprised it has taken this long for radio to follow suit. As much as the idea of digital radio was perfectly logical, its implementation is lousy, and I would have done […]

  • How to Bypass the Herald Sun’s Paywall

    It’s pretty simple to circumvent. Just change the hostname in the URL from “heraldsun.com.au” to “news.com.au” (or any other News Limited publication that doesn’t paywall their content) and load the page. The reason for this (as I mentioned before) is that all of these publications run on the same instance of the same content management […]

  • Telstra’s Default $2000/GB Data Plan

    Am I the only one around here that finds Telstra’s data pack pricing a bit misleading?

  • Micallef Has a Point

    I’m just making a quick post in reference to a little skit that you may have seen tonight on Mad as Hell. The sketch simultaneously interviewed reporters from five different News Limited publications, asking if the concentration of media left us with too few voices. They all supplied the exact same response in unison, claiming […]

  • Securing your Online Polls

    Whether you’re polling the opinion of your reader base, taking votes for an award or running a competition on your website, you probably have some concerns about your system being abused by the hate machine we call the internet. Someone may skew a poll to sway the public perception of popular opinion; Some prize pig […]

  • The Ubermotive Guide to Media Influence

    [11/02/2013] Wow. This story just featured on ABC’s Media Watch. Click here (mirror) for their article (with video). Last week, News Corporation ran a story (mirror) about the shock results of an online poll that indicated over 90% of the 16,000 respondents wanted to see a raise in speed limits, despite the poll being paired with an article […]