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I got a pre-paid USB modem key for use when I’m on the road. After a few little niggles with the Das Keyboard (which I’ll get to in a minute) I found that I couldn’t activate it at all yesterday. The Telstra activation service was offline.

I whined about it on Twitter:

And this morning, Tom from Telstra replied:

I’m not a huge Telstra fan because of the cost of their services, but you’ve gotta give them a thumbs up for this degree of interaction. Nice to see.

Oh, and the Das Keyboard issue? I found that if I have the keyboard plugged in I can’t connect either the USB modem or the iPod. Neither works. Unplug the keyboard and both work perfectly. I’ve done a little trawling of a few forums and it’s apparently a pretty common problem. The Das Keyboard draws a huge amount of power from the USB connector and a lot of laptops just don’t supply enough power. Word is that if you connect the Das Keyboard via a powered USB hub everything is golden. I’m pretty sure I’ve got an old one out in the office so I’ll have to dig it out.