Our new online shopping site currently in development seems to work flawlessy… that was expected, considering Chrome is based on WebKit, but given that we’re getting very close to launch (honest!) I’m pleased to say that IE6 remains the only browser that I hate.

Simon pointed out that Chrome gives very little weight to the web page’s title. Because Chrome has a minimalistic look about it, the classic “File / Edit / View” bar and application title are nowhere to be seen. Furthermore, the tabs cut off page titles after around 20 characters, so page titles like “Gameplanet Store NZ - Buy DVDs, DVD movies, PS2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Wii, and PC games online.” are suddenly extremely useless for all purposes other than search engines. Interesting decision.

More information is available at the Daffodil Day web site.

Chances are incredibly high that you know someone who has suffered or is suffering from cancer. If you haven’t already given to the cause, I urge you to make a donation.

It shouldn’t be possible to dominate an event that lasts approximately 10 seconds, but Bolt did just that. I think this picture sums it up nicely:

When running an Olympic 100m final, you are not supposed to have the time to realise that you’ve won and start to celebrate 20 metres before the line, whilst still setting a new World Record of 9.69 seconds. Incredible.

Breakfast: three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise; two cups of coffee; a five-egg omelet; a bowl of grits; three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar; and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

Lunch: a pound of enriched pasta; two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread; about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Dinner: a pound of pasta; an entire pizza; and another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

According to Wikipedia, Phelps is 6′4″ and 90 kilograms, so clearly as a larger-than-average man who is also an elite athlete his calorie requirements are going to be very high. But 12,000 calories? Some loose math suggests that a semi-active man of Phelp’s size would only need around 3,000 calories per day to maintain his weight, so that’s some serious calorie expenditure to put down to training and muscle maintenance. It’s incredible to consider.

Regarding the choice of foods, it’s a given that if you’re going to consume 12,000 calories then a large portion of that is going to be made up of “bad” foods - (eating 12,000 calories of salad would be nigh impossible) - but still, foods like cheese, mayonnaise, extra sugar, chocolate-chip pancakes and pizza are hardly foods that you would normally associate with fitness freaks.

Whether the diet is quality or not, though, nobody is going to argue with Phelp’s recipe.

More on Phelps: The Age has some more interesting insight on Phelps’ genetic and mental conditions which may have contributed to his success.

Turns out you can get them working on Prepay after all (even though Vodafone won’t tell you that), and with a new casual data rate of $1 for up to 10MB of data on any given day, I couldn’t resist.

The thing is quite brilliant, really. The touch screen is versitile but intuitive and you don’t need a manual to figure out how to use it. The iTunes service becomes far more appealing and interesting when you can browse it casually wherever you are. The App Store is already home to some very cool pieces of software (and some not so cool). Safari works very well, even if it’s missing the Flash plugin. The touch-screen QWERTY keyboard is brilliant. The camera quality is more than good enough, even with its complete lack of stability correction. Photo browsing is great and so is the iPod.

The phone has quickly become my TV Guide, my weather report, my morning news report reader, my Auckland city map book, my home stereo, my walkman and my car stereo… and - less importantly - my phone!

Image taken from Monsoon Poon. (Click to enlarge)

The rest of the site very much keeps the theme alive.

I was too disappointed with the plans, not because comparitively they are genuine “rip offs”, but because there is no entry-level option whatsoever for people like me who really just want to cross-breed an iPod Touch and a cell phone without ruling out the possibility of wanting to use the data features occasionally.

People are complaining that 250MB is not enough for an $80 per month plan because it doesn’t sound like much, but in cell phone terms it should be plenty for anyone who utilises a wifi network whenever possible instead of using the mobile data.

I would have liked to have seen a plan with 100MB of data or less, with the 16GB phone at $699 purchase price plus a contract of $30-40 per month. Then I would’ve been on board.

Right. Today the plans were finally announced as follows:

So the promised $199 option is there, but unfortunately you will be paying $250 per month for 24 months for that privilege. The more realistic option is paying $699 for the 16GB phone and then $80 per month; but even that is astronomical for someone like myself who currently spends about $20 per month on prepay.

I was very very eager for an iPhone… no longer. I have no doubt that the iPhone will sell well - it’s not like this is the first time an Apple device has been overpriced - but personally I’m not prepared to spend such a large sum of money and tie myself into a phone contract I don’t need just to keep up with the Joneses.

Bring on the prepay option.

On a side note, Vodafone’s web site took a hammering and was completely inaccessible from 10am through to around 12pm as people flocked to see the pricing. Considering that Vodafone is the largest mobile telecommunications company in the world, this is pretty poor.

What’s more, as of 6pm Vodafone hasn’t emailed me anything about the new plans. Glad I registered my interest early!

Meanwhile little old New Zealand and big old Australia are still waiting for a release date and pricing for the original Rock Band, which released in the States last year.

Back when EA announced that it had decided to rip off U.K. gamers with Rock Band, I hinted that the game might never make it to our shores… and that is seeming even more likely now. With Rock Band about to be superseded, why bother? And why will Rock Band 2 be worthy of release if Rock Band wasn’t?

Activision might well find an exclusive market for its upcoming band game Guitar Hero: World Tour if EA continues to neglect the Australasian market.

Last week I got a prototype of the site online at strengthfu.com; it’s not open to the public just yet, but if you want to be the first to know when sign-ups are open then please register your interest on the site.

I’ll have more news on this soon.