CityBeat - Te Waha Nui Online

by Amy Paterson

Scrap solar system mobiles, or archaic astronomy CD-ROMs, Google has taken viewing and learning about the night sky to a whole other level.

Google has recently released a new application that allows internet users to explore the night sky from their home computer.

The new feature, Sky, is part of the free online mapping service Google Earth. Read more

by Niko Kloeten

If you want to give yourself an inferiority complex, youtube is the place to go.

Whether it’s sport, music or even politics you can easily find people who are much better at what you do than you ever will be. Read more

by Angela Norton

Like the idea of an online directory where you can type in the name of any person in the world and get a profile of them?

What if people could search for your name and find out everything about you, without you knowing it?

This may not be far from reality. Read more

by Angela Norton

Fighting obesity with video games? Sure, why not?

Starting in the late 90s, the dance mat craze had gamers using a floor input pad and busting moves to match on-screen instructions.

In 2003, Sony went a step further with the motion/colour/sound-detecting EyeToy which paved the way for their Kinetic games - collaborations with Nike providing real fitness routines and virtual personal trainers. Read more

by Jane Sissons

An increasing number of employees are becoming the unwitting victims of Big Brother-style surveillance as employers ramp up their monitoring methods.

Even prior to employment, many employers will now carry out checks on applicants.

One of the newest methods of vetting is to utilise search engines such as Google Read more

by Veronica Johnston

Facebook is the latest Internet darling that has started creeping in to every day conversation.

Already worth an estimated billions dollars, and used by a staggering 20 million users wordwide, the social networking site is an online tour de force.

But users are doing more than finding old friends on Facebook. Read more

by Angela Norton

It’s a camera, it’s a multimedia player, it can browse the internet, it can email…

Oh yeah, and it’s also a phone.

The long awaited iPhone finally hit the US market on June 29, 2007. However, it may be a wee while before the long-awaited, must-have gadget makes an appearance here in New Zealand.

And despite the phone’s slick design and technological maturity, early signs indicate that iPhone is all style, and no substance. Read more

by Amy Paterson

Wouldn’t you just love to be able to crank out the Sweet Child o’ Mine solo by Guns ‘n Roses on guitar?

Well, I can, and it’s awesome. With the press of a few colourful keys, I’m just as good as Slash himself.

All right, just so I don’t offend any GNR fans, I’m going to retract that statement. Read more

by Amy Williams

Kiwis tired of sluggish broadband speeds are speaking out against their Internet Service Providers.

And despite an outry by disgruntled internet users that their ‘broadband’ connections simply aren’t up to speed, the Government is still predicting a “telecommunications revolution” to come.

Last week the Herald online surveyed readers about broadband speeds, asking them to run a speed test on their internet connections. The results speak for themselves: a high proportion of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) simply aren’t delivering on their “high speed” promises. Read more

by Jane Sissons

“Cn u rd ths witot ne prblm?” Of course you can, because communicating in full and coherent sentences is now a thing of the past.

Due to the introduction of new communication technologies such as email, and mobile text messaging, the English language is in a state of rapid transformation. Read more