50 years of play doh

XBox, Playstation, iPods, electric this, computerised that, I still think the best toys are those that were invented years ago and will stay around for ever.

You know things like Lego. Things were you use your imagination and make something. I burnt many hours playing lego as a kid. And mum never had to say turn that thing off!

Well one of the greatest has just turned 50. Play-Doh. So come on which of you didn't have play-doh when you were a kid? Not many I would suggest. And still most kids nowadays get some play-doh at some point.

from the article:
In 1965, U.S. Patent No. 3,167,440 was granted to Noah McVicker and Joseph McVicker for a “plastic modeling composition”, (which was originally intended to be a wallpaper cleaner) now called Play-Doh. Little did they know that they had created the substance of childhood memories as well as many a childhood meal, unfortunately. Play-Doh persists as one of the most well known and popular childrens “toys” with over 2 billion cans sold since its invention in 1956. As you attempt to clean your children’s Play-Doh out of the carpet, the car, and the bathtub; take a look back with us at how it all got started. 

Taking a tour of the new features and technology in IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5

Here is some more on Sametime 7.5 

Australia Postal Address File Statistics

Each quarter we receive the updated Postal Address File (PAF) from the Australia Post AMAS program for distribution to our Address-IT clients. We basically take this database and run it thru a bit of software that we call the PAFinator. The PAFinator builds our version of the PAF file for inclusion with Address-IT. We then distribute the latest release of the Address-IT products a month prior to the expiration date (end of each quarter) for the previous verison. This gives our clients at least a month to then upgrade to the latest version.

Each time we receive the PAF we also receive a summary of the latest PAF statistics. It is always pretty interesting to see where the growth is from previous months.

Here is a summary of how many delivery points there are in the PAF.

	AAT	ACT	NSW	NT	QLD	SA	TAS	VIC	WA	Total
Lots	0	5	29,759	277	35,183	11,245	469	11,655	36,116	124,709
Ranged	0	4,299	267,320	1,476	83,438	14,718	5,224	90,737	21,143	488,355
Single	0	145,905	2,841,702	57,364	1,742,368	683,489	247,481	2,252,762	962,472	8,933,543
Total	0	150209	3138781	59117	1860989	709452	253174	2355154	1019731	9,546,607
Postal Delivery Type	4	37,529	575,165	40,196	400,582	157,518	46,583	401,322	188,517	1,847,416
Grand Total	4	187,738	3,713,946	99,313	2,261,571	866,970	299,757	2,756,476	1,208,248	11,394,023

I have also included the rest of the PAF stats such as how many postcodes are there, localities, etc.

What do the seven PAF tables contain?

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many Points (DPIDs)?	11,309,913	11,394,023
How many Delivery Point Group entries (ie Street Types and Postal Delivery Types)?	375,321	379,255
GroupDID	56,496	57,900
How many Locality entries?	13,354	13,499
LocalityDID	4,573	4,609
How many Synonym Table entries?	4,342	6,020
Valid Synonyms	1,422	1,377
Unacceptable Synonyms	2,920	4,643
How many Code Table entries?	633	633
How many Bordering Locality Table entries?	53,512	53,409
How many Street Alternate Table entries?	672	673

Postcodes and Localities

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many Postcodes are there?		2,8972,902
How many Localities are there?		13,35413,499
How many Postcodes and Localities does each State have?	Post Codes	Localities Post Codes Localities
AAT	1	414
ACT	32	12232122
NSW	715	4,1077144,145
NT	44	15444154
QLD	449	2,8044492,840
SA	344	984343988
TAS	119	739119739
VIC	722	2,7197232,779
WA	477	1,7214771,728

Flat & Unit types

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many of these DPIDs are there?	2,140,423	2,169,538
How many of these have no type? (ie default of Unit)	1,387,222	1,387,514
What are the other major types?
U (Unit)	612,313	636,894
Shop	83,418	85,093
SE (Suite)	31,966	32,698
VLLA (Villa)	5,458	5,554
How many have a suffix?	41,133	41,838

Floors and Levels

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many of these DPIDs are there?	58,303	59,140
What are the major floor and level types?
L (Level)	48,447	49,092
G (Ground floor)	8,508	8,651

Thoroughfares and their DPIDs

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many Thoroughfares are there in the PAF?		364,479368,385
How many DPIDs do these cover?		9,473,2899,546,607
What are the major street types, and how many DPIDs does each have?	Occurrences	DPIDs Occurrences DPIDs
ST (Street)	111,319	3,730,685111,6683,751,436
RD (Road)	85,155	2,019,31787,1722,032,634
CT (Court)	38,072	446,48938,375450,793
AVE (Avenue)	26,471	903,18326,552908,565
PL (Place)	25,130	331,42425,314333,458
DR (Drive)	15,236	556,79915,408565,549
CL (Close)	12,813	164,85912,917166,207
CRES (Crescent)	11,431	372,25811,480374,529
And those with No Street Type (Blank)	2,087	78,0142,11579,544

Street points for Standard addresses

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many DPIDs for standard addresses, eg: 10 Smith Street?	8,867,579	8,933,543

Street points for ranged addresses

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many DPIDs for ranged addresses, eg: 10-12 Smith Street?	478,454	488,355

Lot numbers

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many Lot number DPIDs are there?	127,256	124,709

Primary and Secondary Points

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many primary point records are there?	6,926,085	6,968,370
How many secondary point records are there?	2,419,948	2,453,528

Building/Property Names

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many address records have a Building/Property Name?	106,607	110,812

Postal Delivery Types

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
How many Postal Delivery type DPIDs are there?	1,836,624	1,847,416
What are the major postal delivery types and how many DPIDs do they each have?
PO BOX (Post Office Box)	1,708,136	1,721,272
RMB (Rural Mail Box/Bag)	55,551	53,180
GPO BOX (General Post Office Box)	32,596	32,191
RSD (Road Side Delivery)	9,844	9,916
LOCKED BAG	15,472	15,683
PRIVATE BAG	9,548	9,681
CARE PO	3,808	3,818
MS (Mail Service)	748	751
How many with a suffix?	9,776	9,755
How many with a prefix?	28,215	28,228

Delivery Points

	PAF V2006.2	PAF V2006.3
The total number of DPIDs is?	11,309,913	100%11,394,023100%
These are comprised of:	DPIDs	DPIDs
Street DPIDs	9,473,289	83.76%9,546,60783.79%
Postal Delivery type DPIDs	1,836,624	16.24%1,847,41616.21%
For each State, how many DPIDs	Street Type	PD TypeStreet TypePD Type
AAT	0	404
ACT	149,051	37,515150,20937,529
NSW	3,116,425	571,8863,138,781575,165
NT	59,045	40,18959,11740,196
QLD	1,841,004	397,0881,860,989400,582
SA	707,359	156,407709,452157,518
TAS	252,321	46,389253,17446,583
VIC	2,340,052	399,7452,355,154401,322
WA	1,008,032	187,4011,019,731188,517



Sametime 7.5 Feature Blog

There is a neat Sametime 7.5 blog running over at IBM developerWorks. Ted Stanton has been posting Sametime Sunday (I am guessing this in on the same theme as Show N Tell Thursday). There is some great insites into some of the new features coming in Sametime 7.5.

I particularly like the Click to Talk (VOIP), and the automatic changing of your status depending on what you are currently doing is also neat. An example is Can't Chat Now, In a Meeting. When you are in a meeting it automatically changes your status to match. This is great as how many times does it happen that you are in a Sametime Conference and hence online, but as you are in a meeting you actually want to have a status of Busy. 

SkypeIn now available in Australia

After many months of waiting SkypeIn is now available in Australia. At a cost of approx $AUD50 (€30)  per year or $AUD16 (€10) for a 3 month trial you can now get you very own Australian phone number that will connect thru to your Skype softphone.

I am a big user of Skype. Between our offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, (and I guess my home office), skype is always my first means of calling someone. If I can't get them then I resort back to a normal call. This has resulted in about 80-90% of my intercompany phone calls becoming Skype calls. 3-4 others in the business are also heavy users of Skype and as a result we have noticed about a 50% drop in our monthly phone bill which is a whole lot of beer money!! I also use it extensively for those clients that are also on Skype. The awareness capability of knowing if they are available for a call is a great feature. The fact that you can see them online also seems to help develop a closer working relationship.

This ability to have a SkypeIn number means that our clients can also have a local number to call me on. I will need to test it out and see what sort of quality the calls are but if it works well then I may as well have a local number in each State rather than clients calling a number that is diverted to my mobile when I am out of the office. For that matter I probably should consider a number in the UK for all of our IVR-Xpress Visual Builder clients to call me on rather than international calls. Again I will need to test the quality of audio to make sure it is up to scratch.