Some of the topics we’ll be looking at include;

• What are the minimum ages for using Facebook
• How should parents monitor usage
• Setting up privacy settings
• Being careful about sharing
• Deciding what applications should you allow
• How do other social networks affect your family

We love to hear from listeners so feel free call in with your questions or comments on 1300 222 702 or text on 19922702. If you’re on Twitter you can tweet 702 Sydney on @702sydney and Paul at @paulwallbank.

We had a number of callers with problems including setting up a wireless network, what to do if a drink is spilled on your keyboard and how older people can get useful computer training.

Seniors Computer Assistance

John from Hobart asked about where he could get instructions on using his computer.

The Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association is a volunteer group bringing together local computer clubs that cater for older folk.

ASCCA’s national members directory lists local clubs by state and contacting the nearest group should help you find the right assistance from your peers.

Oh no! I’ve spilled a drink on my computer?!?

Watching a freshly spilled cup of coffee, glass of wine or can of softdrink pour into your keyboard makes for one half panic and the other half despair.

If you move quickly and you turn the keyboard upside down then you have a chance of rescuing a laptop computer before too much damage is done. The important thing is to stop liquid getting onto important circuits.

Having turned the keyboard or laptop upside down, leave it for a day for the liquid to dry out. Then its a good idea to take it to the local computer store to see if it the residue can be cleaned up as usually the keyboard becomes sticky and some keys may not work.

Should the liquid damage a desktop computer’s keyboard that’s usually easily fixed by buying a new keyboard but if you’re using a laptop, then the motherboard – the key part of a computer’s circuits – may be affected and that’s usually time to start shopping for a new system.

Setting up a wireless network

Most of the tech devices we’re getting for our households require some sort of wireless connection.

If you have a wireless network, it’s important you get the security right as you don’t want neighbours and passers-by using your connection. The IT Queries site has instructions on securing these networks.

Once have a secured network, preferably using the WPA2 encryption standard and a strong password, you can then connect each device. You’ll need the name of the network and the WPA2 password to make it work.

Sometimes some devices want older, inferior security settings and occasionally they just won’t work at all. It may take several attempts to get them to work and it’s worthwhile re-reading our ten tips for setting up technology.

Our next national ABC spot will be on February 9 next year. We will probably have some more spots over the summer break and we’ll let newsletter subscribers know about them as soon as we do. We also post them to the events page.

Christmas is a great time for presents and computer and other tech equipment are great gifts.

But technology being what it is, doesn’t always work as it should. Here’s a quick Christmas check list to help avoid letting technology ruin your Christmas;

1. Read the box before opening

Is it compatible with your system? If you have an older Windows or Mac computer the device might not work with your computer. Similarly if your hard drive or memory doesn’t have the capacity required, the whole process might be a struggle.

2. Update your system
Before plugging in new equipment make sure any computers have had the latest security updates and virus definitions installed. Sometimes brand new equipment does come from the shop with nasties installed.

3. Backup anything important
While most of the time things will seamlessly, it’s worthwhile backing up anything important on your computer before installing new equipment.

4. Are all the parts included?

Does it appear to have been opened or used previously? If parts are missing or there’s signs someone else has used the product, you might have been sold something that was previously returned. If so, it’s best to take it back to the store rather than struggling with a possibly defective product.

5. Take your time

It’s Christmas! Chill out and relax, take your time have a mince pie. Don’t rush to set things up, just take it easy. Doing things too fast means you make mistakes.

6. Be careful opening the box

Manufacturers make it very difficult to open boxes; this is not entirely an accident. It’s also common with tech stuff to have little components and gizmos which are easily lost in the box. So be careful removing all the packaging and keep it to one side.

7. Read the manual!

Once again, it’s time for another mince pie while you read the manual. In there you will find all sorts of useful information. Including how not to mess up your system. Usually, you’ll also find a description of the parts in the box, check you haven’t left something small but critical in the box.

8. Eliminate the obvious

Sometimes something simple is wrong, it could something as basic as a disk or plug is in the wrong way. Take it easy and relax.

9. Don’t panic

If things don’t work, relax and have another mince pie. It’s often something simple. Don’t do anything drastic, if you’ve had a few drinks or it’s getting late, leave it for tomorrow morning.

10. Relax

If it doesn’t work, don’t worry. You can return it or call a tech later.

Remember Christmas is a time for sharing and relaxing. Don’t let your computers and technology upset your holiday.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

A hundred years ago this year the iconic Australian horse coach company Cobb & Co went into its first bankruptcy as it declined from being the dominant transport service of rural Australia.

Cobb & Co was founded in 1854 by four young Americans in the Victorian gold rush and grew around the expansion of Australia’s rural farming and mining industries. By 1900 the company had 9,000 horses travelling 31,000km (20,000 miles) every week.

By 1924 Cobb & Co was gone. Displaced by the motor car and restrictive state government rules designed to protect their railways.

Many businesses, including the management of Cobb & Co, thought the motor car was a fad. No doubt many at the time also thought electricity was dangerous and unnecessary.

Business worked fine as it was when stagecoaches carried the mail and bullock carts carted the crops, steam engines were fine to power the farms and businesses while the telegraph was just fine for those times when a three month letter to your customers or creditors in London or New York wasn’t quick enough.

All those businesses went broke. They didn’t go broke fast, it was a slow process until one day owners realised it was all over and then the end came surprisingly quickly.

That’s where many of us our today – cloud computing might be the latest buzzword, social media might be a distraction for coffee addled children of the TV generation and the global market might be just a way to dump cheap goods and services on gullible consumers – but markets and societies are changing, just as they did a hundred years ago.

Sure, your business doesn’t need fast Internet. Business is fine.

Stage coach image courtesy of Velda Christensen at http://www.novapages.com/

One of the problems the project has is the inability of NBNCo, the company established to build and run the network, to articulate the benefits and scope of the project.

Last Friday night “John from Condobolin” grilled the Gadget Guy, Peter Blasina, about the project. John’s questions, and Pete’s answers, which can be found at 35 minutes into his program, illustrates the confusion the surrounds NBN and the failure of the project’s supporters to explain the benefits.

So how should proponents of the National Broadband Network – people like me who believe that high speed broadband are the freeways and railways of the 21^st Century – respond to questions. Let’s answer John’s questions from last Friday.

Lightning might affect fibre networks

John’s first question was about lightning affecting the NBN, commenting when Pete confirmed electrical storms would affect the network that “it’s no better than the existing service.”

Sadly all infrastructure is affected by weather – a freeway is just as affected by fog as a dirt road, perhaps even more so, but it doesn’t mean you don’t build a highway because of that. The same applies for the NBN.

Interestingly the wireless and satellite alternatives proposed to fibre optic cable are even more susceptible to electrical storms, which perversely makes a better argument for running a fibre optic network.

I don’t need any NBN

“I have got quite good reception in Condobolin and I don’t need any NBN, I can assure you” was John’s next big statement.

That’s nice for John that he’s happy with what he has – the rest of us should be so lucky.

For many of his neighbours and those in the surrounding district, particularly those dealing with remote suppliers and overseas markets, reliable and fast communications are essential.

Now is good enough

A farmer doesn’t need broadband for selling into America, he’s able to do that today, was the crux of John’s next comment after he and Pete had an exchange about rolling broadband out to remote locations.

It’s true that farmers can do a lot with today’s satellite and ADSL connections, then again they were able to ship exports in the days of bullock carts and sailing ships. We could extend that argument against railway lines, roads, containers and bulk carriers.

Once upon a time some guy argued against the wheel. Today’s technology has been good enough has always been the argument of those who don’t see the benefits of new tools; we’re talking about tomorrow’s markets and society, not today’s.

Broadband is all about fibre

“You’re talking about satellite dishes and things like that, not NBN.”

The National Broadband Network isn’t just about fibre; fibre optic cables makes up the network’s core and bulk of connections, but wireless and satellite are essential in order to make sure the entire nation has access to the network.

Unfortunately the nonsense argument that technology improvements in wireless will render fibre optics redundant has been allowed to take hold by self-interested politicians and sections of the media pushing a narrow agenda.

Wireless, satellite, fibre optic and other cable technologies are all part of the mix, the real argument is on the proportions of that combination and the consequences to the government’s budget.

Spotting the clueless

As an aside, the cable versus wireless argument is a good yardstick for measuring the knowledge of anyone joining the NBN debate.

Someone clueless arguing against the project says investment in fibre optic cable is unnecessary as it’s speed and data capacities will be one day superseded by those of Wireless networks.

This betrays a failure to grasp the inherent advantage of having a dedicated cable connection to your property as opposed to sharing a wireless base station with hundreds, if not thousands, of others.

Equally anyone pro-NBN who says that fibre is faster because it travels at the speed of light is equally clueless as wireless, copper wire and even smoke signals also travel at – or close to – the speed of light.

Games and videos

“Is this only to watch videos and DVDs?” was John’s last question.

Well, does Condobolin have a video store? A quick Google search shows it does, along with local and satellite TV stations. So the residents of Condobolin are just keen as the rest of us to watch the tube.

Increasingly our viewing habits are moving online and fast broadband is necessary to deliver that. John may be happy to exclude his town from being able to do that, but my guess is plenty of his neighbours would like to have that option.

What’s more, many of those farmers, processors, trucking companies and other service providers in the Condobolin region will need those video facilities for tele-conferencing with suppliers, customers and training companies.

Building for the future

Video conferencing isn’t the only application for what we consider today to be high speed networks, these are going to change society and business in the same way the motor car changed us in the 20^th Century and railways and telegraph in the 19^th.

Australia made a mess of the railways and the roads, in both areas we’re still playing catch up. The National Broadband Network is an opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the last hundred years and get the 21^st Century right.

Unfortunately, the objectives of building a better nation are being lost in a fog of disinformation, political opportunism and corporate incompetence. We can do better than this.

Leaving Facebook isn’t easy, but it can be done and we’ve covered closing down a Facebook profile on the Netsmarts website.

The December Nightlife spot looked at a lot of social media issues and answered other listener’s questions about some of the challenges online. Some of those questions are listed on the page and the program

December’s spot was the last for 2011 and next scheduled Nightlife spot will be on February 9 however we will probably have some segments over the Christmas period and we’ll let newsletter subscribers know as we find out.

Program podcast

A recording of the program is available from the ABC’s Tony Delroy’s Nightlife webpage. You can listen to it through the site or download it and listen to it as a podcast.

Topics covered

Tony and Paul covered a range of topics including the following questions;

• Are we living in the social media age?
• What is social media is?
• Why people use social media?
• How some folk have come unstuck using social websites?
• Can doing the wrong thing hurt your reputation or career?
• What the risks are during the christmas party season?
• Are there too many social media services?
• How businesses can really use them?
• Where will these services go next?

Listeners’ questions

We had a great range of questions and comments from listeners and those we promised to get back to included how to shut down your Facebook account and the link to report abuse on the service.

Reporting Facebook abuse

If you’re being harassed on Facebook, you can report misuse at Facebook’s Help Centre. Their page includes instructions on dobbing in underage users, blocking irritating people and how to use their privacy settings.

Deleting a Facebook profile

Leaving Facebook is not easy, so on the Netsmarts website we have the detailed instructions on deleting your Facebook account.

Note with these instructions that you need to disable any applications you may have installed on Facebook before deleting the account. When you go to the Applications page you may be shocked at how many things are connecting to your page.

Do we have too many social media services?

Tony asked if we have too many social media platforms.

This is a topic we’ve covered previously on the website and while there’s no doubt many of the services around today won’t survive, some will become increasingly become important.

Next Nightlife tech program

Our next program will be on February 9 next year. We will probably have some spots over the summer break and we’ll let newsletter subscribers know about them as soon as we do.

On the November 20 ABC Weekends show, Paul and Lex Marinos discussed what cloud computing is and how it can help you.

We also helped out listeners with various computer and tech questions, including the following;

Malware

Sue was caught out by the DNS Changer Trojan that was recently busted by the FBI. Probably the best fix for this is downloading and running the free Malwarebytes software.

Our IT Queries site has instructions on the somewhat convoluted process for removing this Trojan and other viruses from your computer.

Synchronising an iPhone with iCloud and Google Calendars

One advantage we have with the cloud is that it means you can use devices anywhere, however there is a bug where iPhone calendar functions aren’t synchronising with Google Calendar.

Unfortunately the problem is the iCloud and Google services aren’t compatible on the iphone so one has to be turned off.

If your preference is to use the Google services, then you will have to turn off the iCloud services through the iPhone’s settings app and turning off all of the calendar and contact settings.

You may then want to check your Google services are being synchronised through the iTunes settings.

Sharing data between laptops.

One of the advantages with networking is that you can share data between computers. Sonya wanted to know how she can setup her windows 7 laptops to share data to an external drive.

The best option is to use a Windows 7 compatible Network Area Storage device that sits on the network.

For the setup to work, the network name has to be the same on all three devices, Microsoft has instructions for setting Windows7 network name and the hard drive will have the instructions included for setting it up correctly.

It’s also worthwhile using Microsoft’s Active Sync software to synchronise machines as well so you have files stored on your computer.

If you missed Sunday’s ABC program, there’s more details at Netsmarts’ Cloud Computing explained and The Networked Business, we’ll also be running a Demystifying the Cloud webinar on the Australian Businesswomen’s Network at the end of November.

That will probably be the last ABC 702 Weekends spot for 2011 unless there’s something else that comes up.

Subscribers to our newsletter get early notice of any upcoming programs and other useful information on getting more value online. Don’t miss the next program.

We’ll be going to air from 10pm, Eastern Australian time across Australia on ABC Local Radio’s Nightlife to look at the following questions;

• Why were people disappointed with Apple’s iPhone 4S that was released a few weeks ago?
• The big competition are the Google Android phones, what are they doing?
• What’s happened to Nokia? They seemed to have lost their domination.
• Microsoft were the other big player, what are they doing?
• How are the smartphones changing business?
• Shopping centres seem to be jumping on board with various social media checkins. What are those?
• There’s been a push to online payments, how are the smartphones affecting this?
• Are smartphones going to be the big buy for Christmas?
• What are the best plans for consumers and business?
• How do people deal with telco disputes?

The podcast from the program is available from at Nightlife website, and some of the information we mentioned can be found here;

Dealing with Telco complaints

We’ll be adding more resources in the next few days, the next ABC Nightlife spot is on 23 November and our events page will have more details. If you have any suggestions for future programs or comments on the last show, please let us know as we love your feedback.

We’ll be going to air from 10pm, Eastern Australian time across Australia on ABC Local Radio’s Nightlife to look at the following questions;

• Why were people disappointed with Apple’s iPhone 4S that was released a few weeks ago?
• The big competition are the Google Android phones, what are they doing?
• What’s happened to Nokia? They seemed to have lost their domination.
• Microsoft were the other big player, what are they doing?
• How are the smartphones changing business?
• Shopping centres seem to be jumping on board with various social media checkins. What are those?
• There’s been a push to online payments, how are the smartphones affecting this?
• Are smartphones going to be the big buy for Christmas?

Join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.