As a follow up to last night’s ABC Nightlife computer spot where we looked at who owns our online data, there were a few questions which we’d get back to listeners on.
The entire show can be listened to online through the ABC Nightlife with Tony Delroy website and includes some of the issues we’d get back to listeners on, but first an apology.
Bruce Willis never sued Apple
One of the callers Mark mentioned the story of Bruce Willis suing Apple over ownership of iTunes tracks.
It turns out this never happened as Charles Arthur of the Guardian explains.
While Charles can be a cranky bugger, he’s right in this case that the media didn’t a very poor job in regurgitating an untrue story without ever checking its veracity. Luckily it’s not one that I cited in the program.
Protecting your Twitter Account
One of the topics we discussed was the threat of accounts being hijacked and Twitter is one service that is constantly being compromised because of poor policies. An important part of protecting a Twitter account from being taken over is to make sure an extra level of authentication is used by clicking the “Password Reset” option in the Twitter Account settings.
Recording online
Des asked about recording his own message for an audio Christmas card to his friends and relatives.
On Windows computers, Sound Recorder is the long standing built-in app while on the Mac, Garage Band is the built in application.
There is a free third party application available for both PCs and Macs called Audacity which also allows you to record and edit on your system.
US customer service
One interesting thing about the conversation was how many callers criticised the “US mentality” of providing lousy service. This probably isn’t true as most American businesses provide some of the best customer service in the world.
The lousy service from online companies is more a function of the computer engineering and venture capital background of the entrepreneurs setting up cloud computing and social media services, while the majority of these companies are from the US it wouldn’t be fair to brand this as being an American cultural issue.
Our next Nightlife spot is on December 13 at 10pm and we’ll be looking at Windows 8 and what type of computers should people be considering. Hope you can join us.