My love/hate relationship with technology continues.

On the love side, technology helps me make money. I use a computer to write, to design, to create output that I get paid for. I also get to easily keep in touch too with clients and friends. I can write an email blast and make it look one-on-one (and I love it when I get back personal replies to an email campaign). And today, installing our new A3 mono laser printer (to replace our retired A3) — well, I used the power of Google to enable us to reset settings and get it working again.

On the hate side, technology is frustrating and invasive. I’ll illustrate “frustrating” with this example: my 3-month old PC with high powered configuration and graphics card cannot play video without a FULL crash — I don’t even get a “blue screen of death” — just an instant shutdown/restart. Terrible. So much for that multi-threaded 32-bit operating system. Despite upgrades/uninstalls/reinstalls and many HOURS of time, nothing helps. No reset button here to assist.

And “invasive” — the expectation of email and online communication (along with mobile/cell phones) can be very interruptive. An email doesn’t REQUIRE instant response. My emails arrive silently and sometimes I’ll take hours (or days) to download them. I’ve seen drivers and pedestrians nearly get killed using their mobile phones: forgetting completely about their surroundings. Or even people leaving a movie theatre with their head down, buried in their mobile. What’s so important that at 9pm Sunday it needs instant attention? I love NOT having a mobile phone turned on (only when I’m away, or away from Mel — I’ll carry it with me but I’m lucky to turn it on more than once every few months). Some people mention they envy not having to be a slave to their phone. I’m pretty damn sure they could turn it off more often. No-one really needs to answer their phone when they’re taking a leak!

The video crash is a real pain. It IS like beating your head against a brick wall: every attempt to fix it fails (driver updates for windows, driver updates for the card, drivers for the monitor, re-install DirectX, update media player, turn off hardware acceleration). The problem wasn’t there a month ago. Then it was. Too late to try a System Restore point. Too much time wasted on fixing something that should be more robust!

Grrrrrrr, technology. Is it no wonder I fantasise about flinging my PC out the window at least once per day?!? At least my friends/clients with little experience feel some relief that even someone who has been using computers for over 20 years feels the same way they do.

Earlier this month Facebook added a new feature called “pages” amongst other announcements.

Pages let you do what you’d think: create specific pages on Facebook for all sorts of reasons: business, community, political, artists, schools etc.

The big difference, compared to your profile, is that anyone on Facebook can view complete Pages without having to be added to your network/friends. This then solves one of my Facebook frustrations: the very limited viewing of your profile.

In fact, I think pages are a much better solution, as you can create specific pages for separate needs: I just whipped one up for my Rotary Club.

Anyone can view this page: not just the 40-odd people in my friends list who can see my full profile. It makes a lot of sense!

You can become a Fan of the page, which means (with your permission) you get to keep up to date with what’s happening on that page and you can interact with the apps on the page.

As Ed Dale pointed out in his Facebook video series on his page, there’s no limit to the number of fans (unlike profile friends, which are limited) and they can be added automatically.

Used in the right way, this will make Facebook incredibly powerful: you can broadcast relevant messages to your “fans” — and they are in control if your messages start to get spammy. There’s plenty of viral opportunity here, used correctly, to really help build your network, your online legend/persona and keep in touch yourself with what interests you.

I found a nice little “tutorial” online to activate the Pages feature (not as obvious as you’d think!) — http://www.eironae.com/geekd/2007/facebook-pages-continued/. It only took a few minutes to get it up and running.

Based on this kind of addition to Facebook, I’m more and more convinced it’s a community that will be extremely valuable to all businesses in coming months and years.

According to this tech article I saw in theage.com.au, PayPal has unveiled Mobile Checkout — allowing users with a PayPal account to purchase goods on the fly.

Unfortunately I can’t find info yet on PayPal’s website.

PayPal is reported to have already signed up several partners including Hoyts, Warner Music, Deals Direct, Ready Flowers and Mobile Wine Club… some of which will start offering payments via mobiles today. And within a few months, the service is set to expand to include user-to-user PayPal transfers and payments and donations via SMS.

As the article also reports, combining eBay bidding and buying with mobile checkout means a user could be sitting in their local pub and fully complete an online purchase, without the need for a computer… that’s a great range of additions to online buying options and helps to even further expand the reach of media like eBay and websites for online commerce.

Having just driven around Noosa in Queensland late yesterday afternoon, admiring the beautiful Pacific ocean panoramas, our overnight flight to Perth has landed us just minutes from the Indian ocean (and some rather warm Spring weather!).

We forget sometimes the technology that allows us to spend just 4.5 hours traversing an entire continent, for less than $400 per seat, something of an impossibility (at any cost, let alone at a price affordable for just about everyone) even just 100 years ago.

I still wonder in another 100 years what experiences might be like that are just as “impossible” for us today!