Australian summer doesn’t mess around – with temperatures reaching in the forties, it’s vital to stay cool, hydrated and follow the sun safety rules of slip, slop, slap, seek and slide. Everyone has a plan to beat the heat, which can range from a humble pedestal fan all the way to state-of-the-art air conditioning – but have you made plans for your tech?

All electrical devices generate heat and it’s perfectly normal for them to be warm to the touch after they’ve been running for a while, but running too hot for too long can negatively affect performance and eventually cause devices to break. You may be surprised to know that we’ve seen cases of modems overheating during heat waves, particularly in desert climates where the weather gets hottest.

Although broadband modems are typically left switched on all the time, they’re not necessarily in any danger of overheating as long as you follow these simple steps. You can apply the same logic to all of your devices (including computers, laptops, game consoles and smartphones) to ensure that you and your tech stay cool this summer.

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We’ve just had a chance to put together a video clip that illustrates what the world record distance run in the Global Green Challenge (27th October 2009) looked like.

We were fortunate to have a great documentary film crew recording the whole event, and they provided us with footage to let us cut together our little ‘record distance’ story visually.

So… here it is:

Thanks again to the amazing team of people who made this experience possible.

Your efforts were above and beyond.

Australia is a country in which “full-rate” ADSL2+ services are popular. This is less common in other countries than you might expect. This post goes into the factors that can impact ADSL2+ performance in some detail. As a result, its fairly long!

But: If your ADSL2+ service isn’t working well for you, if you’re not sure if its working as fast as it can, or if you just want to see whether you can make your service work a bit quicker  – I hope you find this an article worth reading in its entirety. (more…)