With Bigpond Music now selling DRM-free MP3s, and their range increasing every week, they’re fast becoming my etailer of choice for music downloads.

Right now (and I don’t know how long it’ll last) they’ve got a 25% discount offer on music vouchers brought from Safeway/Woolworths, and possibly other retailers.

So tracks that normally cost $1.69 (the same as Apple’s iTunes in Australia) now effectively cost about $1.27, and an album about $12.37. Vouchers appear to be valid for about a year and a half.

You can browse the web site before paying to see if they have what you want. Admittedly, they don’t have as wide a range (even in their older format WMA) as iTunes.

This should be welcome to Aussies who can’t buy DRM-free music from Amazon, who want to be free of Apple’s iTunes DRM and don’t want to delve into the shadowy world of AllOfMP3(*): Telstra’s Bigpond Music has started selling DRM-free MP3-format music. It only covers certain artists at the moment, but here’s hoping it expands rapidly, as they appear to have lined-up deals with most of the major labels:

The agreements will see BigPond offer music from record labels Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI, as well as leading Australian independent record labels and distributors including MGM, Inertia, Liberation, IODA, and AmpHead.

Tracks are A$1.69 (the same as iTunes); albums are A$16.50 (slightly cheaper) — or A$15 for Bigpond broadband subscribers.

• Telstra press release: BigPond turns up the volume with MP3 downloads
• Bigpond Music
• Bigpond Music top MP3 albums

(*) I don’t know for sure if AllOfMP3 is legit or not, but I do know this — for the amount of money they’re charging, no way is any money getting back to the artist.

Google Maps has launched Streetview for some Australian cities.

Flinders Street Station, Melbourne

View Larger Map

Age story

PS. Japan just launched too

Looks like the Citylink tunnels caused some GPS glitches — it thinks there are little bits of road way in the middle of The Domain.

Google blog announcement

Microsoft has dropped the price of XBox 360 in Australia, to $349 for the base-level Arcade (note, it doesn’t run old XBox games because it has no hard drive, and won’t provide HD video), $499 for the Pro (what should be called the standard model), and $649 for the XBox 360 Elite.

XBoxWorld reports the Arcade can be got from BigW for just $278 at the moment.

Hmmm. $278 to play Pacman Championship Edition. Am I enough of a sucker to buy it?

Comparative RRPs: Nintendo Wii $399.95; PS3 $699.95. (Why does Nintendo’s web site include no price information?!)

Game-On at ACMI in Melbourne closes this Sunday, and ACMI have told the Herald Sun that they’re close to reaching the high score attendance record for the exhibit.

So do go along if you’ve been considering it. We liked it so much I took the kids twice.

Show a valid Metcard on Thursday nights (open until 9pm) for concession rate entry.

I was amused to see this Donkey Kong reference in a cartoon by Andrew Dyson in last Friday’s Age, commenting on the current Australian political stoush over petrol prices. It features opposition leader Brendan Nelson as Donkey Kong, and PM Kevin Rudd as Mario.

It’s official — Vodafone will sell the iPhone in Australia. It’s not expected to be exclusive to them; I’d bet on hearing from other carriers soon confirming they’ll be selling it too.

And reasonably persistent rumours suggest it will be launched when the Apple Sydney store opens, towards the middle of this year.

(via Shane)

Telstra has upgraded a bunch more exchanges around Australia to ADSL2+, including my humble local in Bentleigh, Victoria. When I looked, Whirlpool’s Broadband Choice hadn’t been updated with the new information yet, but you can check via Telstra Bigpond’s page.

Whether I upgrade or not is another matter. I’ve noticed that while downloading Linux torrents, the bottleneck is actually at my PC, not the modem/net connection. The torrent speed is pretty good, but the connection on the PC doing the torrenting is swamped, while the other PC sharing the modem isn’t. This is a very puzzling thing to me, and something I need to explore further, as obviously something (LAN card maybe?) is operating sub-par. Obviously that needs tackling first… until then, 1500/256 will do me.

Rumours have been flying around about this kind of thing for months. Here’s more: Apple is preparing a 3G iPhone, and it’ll hit the streets initially on Telstra’s NextG network.

(via iPhonic)

Memo to self: when my ISP (Netspace) shapes after hitting the monthly download limit, they do not automatically unshape at the end of the billing period. You just have to disconnect and re-connect to get the proper speed back. Annoyingly, this information is nowhere to be found in their online help.

(It’s never happened to me before, which is why I didn’t know.)

Dan’s noticed there’s not enough Green electricity to supply all those people who are buying it.

This looks like a job for the ACCC.

In a demonstration of how difficult it is to single out a root cause the changes in a figure derived from complex behaviour, an economist (using the exact methodology that John Howard cites for determining the contribution of Work Choices to labour market growth) has shown that:

… [Kevin] Rudd has added many jobs - in fact 10% more jobs per month than Work Choices did.

So: politician lies; footage at eleven. If the government wanted to actually measure if Work Choices made things better, they should have said something like “everywhere except WA”, or “only applies to people born after the 6th of the month” or whatever. Then they’re would be two systems, and you could actually measure it.

Myself, I’m looking forward to the decrease in employment because Rudd is no longer leader of the opposition (read the article, you’ll understand that comment eventually).