Like the Google Wave–inspired interface for Gmail, the new user interface is cleaner and bolder than the current version, offering more options to the user. It may still be far from deployment, however, but it’s good to see some changes after so many years of same old, same old.

Seriously – they’re only a massive multi-billion dollar company. Who can blame them from excluding Tasmania from the drop down menu to select what state you live in on the order form? What’s more, who can blame them for replying to tipster Ben’s email with a generic response saying that the cause was probably the fact that he didn’t have cookies enabled? And who can blame them for not actually fixing the issue after a couple of weeks?

And because this is the internet, I should probably spell out that I was being sarcastic, and that this lack of service (and recognition of Tasmania) is atrocious from the Big M. Sure, there may not be anywhere near as many students in our southernmost state, but it’s really an issue that could have been resolved quickly and easily with a minimum of effort.

Here’s a copy of the response from Microsoft tipster Ben had after informing Microsoft of their mistake:

Dear bclea,

Thank you for ordering from the Windows 7 Student Offer online store.

We apologize for the delay. Please attemp a new order.

The message that you received indicates that there are no items in your shopping cart.

Commonly, this is due to your browser not accepting cookies. A cookie is a small file written to your hard drive by some web sites. We
require that a cookie be set on your computer so that you can access our secure server for processing your credit card transaction, downloading your software, and checking your shippable order status information.

For information on setting your browser to accept cookies, please visit:

http://www.microsoft.com/info/cookies.htm

Once you have updated your settings, please close all windows, and restart your browser.

To attempt a new order, go to:
http://windows7.digitalriver.com/store/mswpau/en_AU/ResetShoppingCart

Any other Tasmanian students suffering this issue?

[Microsoft Student offer]

Starting today, users can attach all types of files – except images embedded in the body of the email. These messages now go through the outbox when you’re online or offline, allowing Gmail to capture the attachment either way. [Gmail Blog via TechCrunch]

If you’ve got a Wave account, you can check out the reconstruction here. Google Wave team member, Lars Rasmussen, says the idea for the demo came from Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly Media, publisher of Make Magazine amongst other things). Kinda fun, though I’m still not sure what’s going on half the time in Wave. [TechCrunch]

From the petition:

TO: The Honourable the Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland
Queensland residents draws to the attention of the House that the Classification of Computer Games and Images Act 1995 is currently out of step with the wishes of the electorate.

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House that it be amended to permit computer games to receive the R18+ classification when they have been refused classification under the Commonwealth Act.

The petition, which is only available to Queenslanders, will probably amount to nothing, but even so, if you’re a maroon, you should definitely head here and put your signature onto it. After all, if you’ve got the government working on your side, you may as well take advantage of it…

[Queensland Parliament e-petition, via Atomic - Thanks Adam!]

That the iPhone is a massive source of online traffic isn’t a surprise – that’s been apparent since the week it launched. What’s interesting here is Android’s rise, which is dramatically quickening, already accounting for a fifth of mobile traffic in the US, when the real marketing push for the OS, starting with the MyTouch ads and the massive Droid launch, is only recently starting in earnest.

The stats, from mobile advertising firm AdMob, are a little less spectacular worldwide, mainly because Symbian’s established, but waning, 40 per cent smartphone market share helps it snatch about 25 per cent of mobile web traffic. Still though, two things are clear: Android and the iPhone are who mobile web developers are going to have to cater to, and WebKit, which Symbian uses in its browser too, is basically it.

And how about a bonus chart! Ever wondered how common the different Android handsets are, which is most popular, and which don’t register? Well hello, extra pie on the right.

The G1 is the predictable star here, but the Droid is moving fast, or else its users surf a lot of web. [AdMob via Techcrunch]

This started when Microsoft and Google paid for access to Twitter’s millions of tweets and Bing paid Facebook and Twitter for access to their pages. Think about this perspective, if you ran Fox the WSJ and other major content makers, wouldn’t you think that your content is worth more than all those 140 character posts? Right, you would. And if those sites are charging hundreds of millions for their content, wouldn’t you ask for a lot more? You probably would, and if you’re Murdoch, the most powerful man in media, you’d probably get what you want and then set a nasty precedent for the rest of the short tail of mega media companies to get a lot of Google’s cash. Maybe a lot of these companies value Google’s help in promoting their stuff, but it never hurts to ask for money, especially when media and publishing are super duper hard up on cash these days, in general. I’m not an investor in big media or any tech companies, so its not a problem for me necessarily in that way. But it is a problem for me as a guy who lives and works through search engines.

Microsoft is just being evil again. Now, this isn’t typical Microsoft bashing – someone has to fight Google. And in a way, you have to hand it to Microsoft. They’re the underdog here fighting a Google that grows in power every day, and their Facebook content deal won’t likely be matched by Google any time soon. But this is so typically Bad Microsoft, because they’ve cleverly shortcut the straightforward fight for market share by features and gone for a deal-based solution to the problem. Like the PC and OS fight in the ’80s they’re competing with business tactics instead of quality. (And Bing is great, so I’m not making a complete 1:1 comparison to Windows.) We’re sort of left with – instead of a David and Goliath – a Clash of the Titans situation with pieces of rock and lighting falling from the sky and crushing us. Microsoft fails to see/care that the fragmentation that Microsoft is trying to achieve is not only going to hurt Google – it is going to hurt YOU AND ME.

This is the Microsoft we know from the last century, before great underdog products like Xbox and Zune. This is from a company whose CEO recently told us that sales are more important than critical acclaim, preferring profit over better product. And this is a company that gets in its anticompetitive digs when it can: For example, in Internet Explorer, it’s really hard to set Google as your default browser, not being listed in the alternative choices to Bing. Yet, in Google Chrome, it’s easy to set Bing as the default search.

Again, imagine that half of the top 500 media companies are delisted from Google. And imagine that Google stoops to this strategy and buys out the other half of that 500. Now imagine you have to search for something and now have to type it in twice because who the f—k is going to remember (no-one) which search engine covers which content?

People, I’m telling you, this is bad news. People talk about net neutrality like it’s only about the data’s prioritisation over the pipes. But what good is equivalence in data speed and prioritisation if you can’t find it in the first place?

[WSJ]

The Financial Times reports that both companies have discussed the idea, though talks are still at an early stage. It’s also hard to imagine Bing becoming the exclusive place to search for News Corp content – like the Wall Street Journal – any time soon. As soon as a smaller blog links to a News Corp story, it’ll be straight back on Google. The “new” search wars have well and truly begun. [Financial Times via Business Insider]

Vanish, a combination of a manhunt and an experiment, began at 5.38pm on August 14, 2009 as a bold headline on Wired proclaimed “Author Evan Ratliff Is on the Lam. Locate Him and Win $US5000.” We would discover if someone could disappear in today’s world, or whether the electronic trails from ATM, email and mobile phone usage would give him away.

Of course, in Evan’s case it wasn’t just a few concerned family members or police officers looking. It was any person on the internet whose curiosity was aroused, either by the sheer challenge or by the bounty. Any and all traceable information would be shared over the next few weeks. Soon Evan’s phone records, credit card statements, IP dumps, interviews with friends, and anything that his hunters could dig up would be posted on Twitter, Facebook and Wired’s own site.

The end goal for the hunters was to locate Evan, photograph him after giving the codeword “fluke”, and then submitting that photo along with a codeword Evan would provide to Wired. And after 27 long days, someone did just that. Evan was caught.

You can read the entire tale here. As you do, consider whether Evan made any genuine mistakes or whether his capture was simply inevitable. Is there a way to disappear without giving up travel and technology? How would you do it? [Wired]