Category: Radio shows

Leaving Facebook

Shutting down an account with the popular social media service isn’t easy but can be done.

In our social media segment for December 2011’s ABC Nightlife a listener asked about closing down their Facebook account.

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.

Tony Delroy’s Nightlife: Our digital reputation

How important is our online footprint?

December’s Tony Delroy’s Nightlife looked at the risks of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Along with being a great way to communicate with family, friends and colleagues using online services can have some unexpected effects.

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.

Cloud Computing Explained: 702 Sydney Weekends

This month’s 702 Sydney Weekend spot looks at cloud computing.

What on earth is cloud computing? Is it just another IT buzzword or something that you can use in your home and business?

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.

ABC Nightlife: The next wave of smartphones

Paul Wallbank joined Rod Quinn to look at where mobile phones are going.

The world of mobile phones is getting busy again as a whole new range of smartphones appear. Paul Wallbank joined Rod Quinn for ABC Nightlife on October 20 to discuss what the new smartphone wars mean for home and business users.

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.

The next of wave of smartphones

Our next ABC Nightlife program looks at the next generation of mobile phones

The world of mobile phones is getting busy again as a whole new range of smartphones appear. Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy to discuss what the new smartphone wars mean for home and business users.

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.

Technology with Carol Duncan on ABC Newcastle

On ABC 1233 Newcastle with Carol Duncan we discuss privacy and security on social media after Facebook’s privacy changes.

In the occasional tech spot with Carol Duncan, we looked at Facebook’s new changes and what they mean to users.

The immediate changes to Facebook are the News Feed at the top of the page where updates and posts will be ranked according to what Facebook thinks are your interests, to the left of the screen is “the ticker” which will give summaries of updates.

Coming in the next few weeks will be the Timeline feature which will give show the history of all your posts.

A great summary of the changes with a hands on review is Jason Kincaid’s article on the Facebook changes in Tech Crunch. The official Facebook blog goes into the detail of all the new features.

The purpose of these changes is to increase Facebook’s value as an advertising platform and it raises the question of the viability of these networks.

One of the interesting features of these changes is that users will start seeing increased advertising, if you’re not happy with this our Netsmarts site goes through the process of shutting down your Facebook account.

Join us on ABC Newcastle with Carol Duncan to discuss these issues and more.

ABC Nightlife Computers: The Internet Name Wars

How the Internet’s name wars can affect you

The online empires want our names and identities, are the real costs of social media now being exposed? Our September ABC Nightlife spot on September 22 from 10pm looked at these issues and more.

Paul and Tony discussed how Google’s “Name Wars” or “nymwars” came about, why social media sites like Facebook and search engines want you to use to use your real names.

The podcast from the program is available from at Nightlife website, more details of Tony’s programs can be found there as well.

Is this a good thing or are there costs we should consider before handing over our intimate details to a social media or free cloud computing service?

Some of the topics we covered included;

  • What are the “name wars’?
  • Why do companies like Google and Facebook want us to use our ‘real’ identities?
  • How can they use the information they gather?
  • What problems does that cause for Internet users?
  • Can these problems spill into real life?
  • Are all web services doing this?
  • What are the risks to businesses using social media?
  • Is this the real cost of social media?

Some of the information we mentioned can be found here;

The cost of lunch: Google and Information Revenue
Google’s real names policy explained
Google’s Eric Schmidt on being an “identity service”, not a social network
Google’s company philosophy (note item two)
Why Twitter doesn’t care what your real name is

We’ll be adding more resources in the next few days, the next ABC Nightlife spot is on 20 October 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.

Apple after Steve Jobs: ABC Weekend computers

What does Steve Jobs stepping down as Apple’s CEO mean to Mac users?

The September 11 ABC 702 Sydney Weekends segment discussed what Steve Jobs’ stepping down as Apple CEO means for Mac users.

Simon Marnie and Paul Wallbank looked at why Steve Jobs was important to Apple, who will be taking over and whether this affects whether you should buy an Mac computer, iPhone or iPad.

Listeners’ Questions

As usual, we had plenty of great questions from listeners and some of them we promised to get back to, these included the following.

Removing Mackeeper

Cheryl called about MacKeeper warnings that keep popping up on her Apple computer.

MacKeeper, and other variants like MacProtector and MacSecurity, are known as malware – software designed for malicious reasons – which has been the bane of Windows computer users for years.

Removing Mackeeper is relatively easy and Apple has released a security patch to fix it. Details and download are available at the Apple Support website.

Wiping an old computer

The most valuable thing on a computer is the data, so it’s important to wipe any system before disposing of it. Deborah asked how to wipe her old Mac system before she left it out for her council’s e-waste collection.

If you have an OS X or OS 9 disk, you can completely wipe and “zero” the disk to make it extremely difficult for someone to recover any data from the old computer. Apple have detailed instructions on this at their How To Zero All Data On A Disk page.

Warning! Before following these instructions, make sure you have backed up all important and valuable data.

How to disable automatic Windows Updates

Updating your computer, whether you have a Windows or Mac computer, is very important as new security bugs are found all the time. Gary though was finding his system automatically installing Windows Updates often disrupts his work.

It isn’t a good idea to totally disable the Windows Update service as those updates and patches are important, but you can change the settings so they are downloaded but not installed until you choose to do so.

Microsoft’s Knowledge Base describes how to change the Windows Update Settings, we recommend the download updates but let me choose when to install them option.

Next 702 Weekends tech spot

Our next Weekends spot is scheduled for 23rd October when we’ll be discussing how to backup your valuable data. Check the Events Page or subscribe to our newsletter for any changes to the 702 Sydney programs and any other upcoming radio shows.

ABC Nightlife: The Spare Room Tycoon

How you can set up a world beating business from your home

Our retailers, the media and many other industries are struggling as a new generation of entrepreneurs are springing up from home and changing the way we shop, work and socialise.

Whether you’re looking at starting your own business or looking to grow an existing business, you need to understand how these free or cheap online social media, local search and cloud computing services can help you.

Join Paul Wallbank and Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife to discuss how our work and business is changing and how you can use these powerful online social media, local search and cloud computing tools.

Aspects we’ll discuss include;

    • How can someone take on the big boys from their spare room?
    • What sort of costs are involved?
    • How difficult is it to setup an online business?
    • Are juggling home and business demands likely to cause problems?
    • What are the challenges of keeping the kids off your home systems?
    • How do you stop hackers and security risks?
    • How can existing businesses adapt to this new world?

If you’d like to add to the list or join the conversation with your on-air questions or comments are welcome, phone in 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, twitter @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

702 Weekends: Understanding Hacking

In a year when we increasingly see more computer hacking, how do we protect our businesses and family systems.

In the week after 73 organisations have been compromised by hackers, the August ABC Weekends computer spot with Paul Wallbank and Philip Clark discussed the wave of hacking attacks, how it affects you and how we can protect our home and business networks.

We also looked at how spammers and scanners are moving onto social media platforms and where services like Facebook and Twitter could be going next.

Callers had a range of questions and comments and we promised to get back to the following;

Removing malware

Bagwhat called about a computer that keeps showing a warning from “XP Internet Security 2012” that his computer has viruses.

This is a classic malware problem and we’ve covered how to clear it in our Removing A Trojan page on the IT Queries website.

Of all the programs we discuss Malwarebytes is the most effective, however a serious infection will use usually require hitting the problem with a range of solutions.

Transferring email contacts to an iPad

David asked how to import contacts from his Mozilla Thunderbird email program into his iPad, the process for doing this requires three steps which we’ve covered at IT Queries in How Do I Transfer Contacts To My iPad or iPhone.

The iPad forums and Apple’s support website have more detailed information on how to transfer data between the applications and devices.

Junk folders in Windows Live Mail

One of the delights of having a decent junk mail filter is you never see the dozens of pointless emails that arrive in your inbox each day. So when an update damages your spam filter, as Windows Live 2011 did for Sue, then it’s a real irritation.

The repair for this is actually quite straightforward, and we’ve covered this in Windows Live Mail Junk Folders Not Working at IT Queries.

Once it’s finished, you’ll be asked to reboot the computer and the problem should be fixed after the restart.

Reinstalling an Antivirus

Norton Antivirus is bugging Sharon to buy a new versions of their software and she wanted to know if it was worthwhile.

The free Microsoft Security Essentials is a good substitute for Windows computers so there’s no need to update the Norton service.

With Nortons it is important to completely remove the program as it will clog up the system, so make sure it’s properly uninstalled and then run the Norton Removal Tool to make sure all the Symantec services are no longer on the computer.

Our next ABC 702 Weekends program should be on Sunday, September 11 at 10.10am which we’ll confirm closer to the date. Subscribe to our newsletter or watch our webpages for upcoming events.

ABC Nightlife: The Year of the Hack

How do we protect ourselves from online security problems?

It’s beginning to look like 2011 will be remembered as The Year of the Hacker as we see thousands of people affected by computer security problems at big corporations and government departments.

As we trust more of our data to online services like cloud computing applications and social media platforms should we be expecting these organisations to protect our private and financial information?

Tony Delroy and Paul Wallbank from 10pm on Thursday, June 30 2011 discussed what is happening to our valuable data in the online world.

Aspects included;

  • What exactly is hacking?
  • Who are these hackers?
  • Why are we seeing so many hacks happening?
  • How do these data problems happen?
  • Big corporations seem to be affected, is this something small business should watch out for?
  • What can we do to protect ourselves?
  • Should we be careful with social media platforms as well?

Listen now

If you missed the program, it’s available for podcast or download at the Nightlife Website.

Useful resources

If you’re concerned that your personal details have been leaked in the latest round of security, the Should I Change My Password site checks if your email address is on the available list of compromised accounts.

Removing malware

One of our callers, George, asked about a virus that was diverting his son’s computer to an unwanted web site that loads when the system starts.

The computer has been infected with what we call a page hijacker and it can be removed with the free Malware Bytes program.

Sometimes the infection can be a bit more persistent in which case we have instructions on Removing A Trojan at our sister IT Queries website.

Upcoming programs

The date of the next Nightlife tech spot will probably be August 4, but that’s to be confirmed. If you’d like to keep up to date with upcoming appearances, visit our Events page or Subscribe to our newsletter.

Add your views

If you’d like to  join the conversation with your on-air questions or comments are welcome, phone in during the show on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

The show goes to air across the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Local Radio Network. 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, twitter @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

ABC Nightlife: Our Digital Future

What do we mean by a digital economy?

Our digital future

In the last week the Federal government announced their National Digital Economy Strategy while at the Sydney Opera House the Digital Sydney project was launched. In New York the city has appointed a digital commissioner and London has launched their Tech City community.

Clearly our governments think the future is digital. But what does that mean and are their plans achievable? Join Paul Wallbank and Tony Delroy to examine how our society, economy and businesses are changing in the digital era.

The program details

The podcast of the program is available for a limited time at the Tony Delroy’s Nightlife homepage.

Aspects we discussed included;

  • Why are our governments suddenly talking digital?
  • What are the digital industries?
  • How are they changing the way we live?
  • In what ways are existing industries coping with these changes?
  • What are the barriers to setting up new industries?
  • How do we create regional business hubs?
  • How important is broadband in these developments
  • What tools can we use to start new online business?

Listeners’ Questions

YouTube not playing

Rod asked about his computer not playing YouTube clips. This is usually due to problems with the Adobe Flash software on the computer.

To fix it, first uninstall all the versions of Adobe Flash on the computer. Then run a computer cleanup on the system. Finally reboot your computer then reinstall Adobe Flash Player.

Multiple business accounts on one computer

Running a number of businesses from one office can raise some difficulties, Jane called to ask if she can have different email accounts that have each businesses customised address block.

The answer is “yes” if you’re running Microsoft Outlook, you can setup separate accounts that automatically add the correct business information. Microsoft explain how on their web site. This feature has been around for some time although instructions vary between the different software versions.

Choosing the right Internet plans

Two of our callers, Shirley and Margaret, called about the limits and costs of their Internet connections. This is understandable as both prepaid wireless and satellite Internet plans can be very expensive.

Where possible it’s best to go to fixed plan with shaped excess usage, where rather than being charged when you go over the monthly data limit your connection is slowed.

It does take some research to find the right service and we recommend Whirlpool’s Broadband Choice website to find the plan that suits your needs.

Software and websites referred to in the program

Ccleaner: Free computer clean up tool (remember to back up your data first)
Adobe Flash Player
Microsoft Outlook email signature setup
Whirlpool Broadband Choice

Next program

The next Nightlife program should be at 10pm on July 14. The topic we’ll discuss will be posted on the events web page and in our weekly newsletter. Subscribe to get all the details of upcoming radio segments and workshops.