Tag: ABC

Security, smartcars and Microsoft Windows – ABC Nightlife July 2015

Security problems with smartcars and dating sites along with asking if a new version of Microsoft Windows matters any more

Security problems with smartcars and dating sites along with asking if a new version of Microsoft Windows matters any more are the topics for July’s Nightlife tech spot.

Paul Wallbank regularly joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife on to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

If you missed this month’s show, you can listen to the program through the ABC website.

July’s Nightlife

A decade ago people lined up all night for a new version of the Windows operating system. Next week Microsoft will be launching Windows 10 to an indifferent market place, does what was once the world’s biggest software company matter anymore in a world of smartphones, connected cars and cloud computing?

Some of the questions we’ll be answering include.

  • So what are Microsoft announcing next week?
  • What happened to Windows 9?
  • Does Windows really matter any more?
  • The internet has changed things but not always for the better. What about connected cars being hacked?
  • Is this a bigger problem than just connected cars when we’re seeing things like kettles being wired up to the internet?
  • Of course it’s not just cars suffering problems on the Internet, adult dating site Ashley Madison has had potentially 37 million customers’ details leaked online.
  • Could this happen to any business? How do we protect ourselves?

Listeners’ questions

A few of the questions from listeners couldn’t be answered on air.

Running Flash of iPhones and iPads: Steve Jobs’ hatred of Adobe Flash was legendary and as consequence iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad don’t come with the ability to run the software. That’s a problem for those who need Flash for some packages.

The Puffin web browser gives iPad and iPhone users the ability to use Flash on their devices and is available from the iTunes store.

Securing Android: While smartphones are less prone to viruses and malware than personal computers, they still are at risk. For Android users there is no shortage of choice for security packages, some of which include;

Android power hogs: A downside with smartphone apps is they can drain battery life. One excellent feature on Android phones is the ability to easily check what’s using your juice.

  • Open device settings
  • Scroll to “about phone”
  • Click on “battery use”

Join us

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

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

 

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Your TV is watching you. ABC Nightlife February 2015

For the February 2015 Nightlife we look at spying TVs, the internet of rubbish bins and robot hotels

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife nationally from 10pm Australian Eastern time on Thursday, February 19 to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

If you missed the show, the program is available for download from the ABC site.

For the February 2015 program Tony and Paul look at robot driven hotels, the internet of rubbish bins and how your TV could be listening to you.

Last year a lawyer read the terms and conditions of his new Samsung TV and discovered that the company recommended people don’t discuss sensitive information around it. This has lead to widespread, and justified, concerns that all our smart devices – not just TVs but smartphones and connected homes – could be listening to us. What happens to this data and can we trust the people collecting it?

The internet of rubbish bins

It’s not only your TV or smartphone that could be watching you, in Western Australia Broome Shire Council is looking at tracking rubbish bins to make sure only council issued ones are emptied.

Shire of Broome waste coordinator Jeremy Hall told WA Today  the council’s garbage truck drivers had noticed more bins than usual were getting emptied and a system needed to be put in place to identify “legitimate” bins.

While Australian councils are struggling with rubbish bins a hotel in Japan is looking to replace its staff with robots and room keys with face recognition software. The Hen-na Hotel is due to open later this year in Nagasaki Prefecture, the Japan Times reports.

Join us

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

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

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ABC Nightlife – security, dropping off the grid and 4D printing

Apple Security, the Heartbleed bug and dropping off the grid are the topics of the May 2014 ABC Nightlife spot

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightlife across Australia from 10pm Australian Eastern time tonight to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

For the May 2014 spot we looked at computer security, specifically Apple ransomware and The Heartbleed bug along with dropping off the grid, 4D printing and the future of design.

To protect from the Oleg Pliss ransomware – or any similar problems – have a strong password, enable the screen passkey and enable two factor authentication.

Join us

We’d love to hear your views so 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 from 10pm Eastern Summer time 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.

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What’s coming in tech for 2014 – ABC Nightlife computers

On ABC Local Radio we’ll be looking at the big tech stories for 2014

For the first Nightlife tech spot of 2014 Paul will be joining Kate O’Toole to look at what’s going to big technology news in the year ahead.

The show has been and gone. If you missed it, you can download it from the ABC Nightlife website.

A lot of this year’s technology stories will be around things we’ve been talking about for a while, but a wave of cheap devices is making things like the connected car and smart house more affordable and accessible to homes and businesses.

The Connected car

While it’s early days for the connected car, in the near future we’ll see them talking to intelligent roadsigns to reduce the roadtoll and to our smart houses to let our airconditioners and kettles know we’re on the way home.

2014 is going to see these vehicles become common, by the end of next year we’ll be expecting most models to have these features.

Wearable tech

We’ve been hearing a lot about Google Glass, but the real advances in wearable tech are in devices like the Fitbit that tracks your daily exercise.

The next wave of wearable tech will be intelligent clothing, a good example of this is the Mimobaby kimono that measures a baby’s movements and repiration during the night.

The Internet of Things

One of the truths of the tech industry is that it loves buzzwords – in recent years we’ve had social media, cloud computing and crowdsourcing – the next big one is The Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things deserve the hype. With cheap sensors, accessible internet and cloud computing it’s now possible to connect, monitor and analyse everything from cows to refrigerators. This will have big effects on most industries.

Smartphone wars

For the past few years we’ve seen the iPhone and then Android, primarily Samsung phones, dominate the smartphone market. This is about to change as a wave of cheap Chinese phones flood the market.

Expect smartphone and tablet prices to fall dramatically as a range of new devices appear on the shelves. We will probably see Apple and Samsung respond by increasing the features available on their more expensive, higher margin devices.

3D Printing

Another technology that’s become affordable in recent years is 3D printing. At the CES show, a new range of 3D printers was released that have cameras so you can make copies of items.

3D printing is rapidly gaining acceptance and the worldwide makers’ movement is showing what we can do with these machines.

National Broadband Network

In Australia the NBN will continue to be the biggest local tech story. Unfortunately the project will remain mired in contractual and political problems as the government tries to figure out exactly what it wants to build.

While Australia plays games, the rest of the world is getting on a building their networks and Australians can expect the country to fall further behind the global leaders on almost every measure.

Security

With the revelations of Edward Snowden we can expect security and privacy to be an ongoing story in 2014.

As corporations and social media companies struggle with the challenge of storing and protecting customer’s data, there will be more discussion of how we can protect our vital information both on and offline.

We’d love to hear your views so 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 from 10pm Eastern Summer time on Thursday, January 10 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.

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Where next for the NBN – ABC Nightlife technology

With a change of government, Australia’s troubled National Broadband Network is facing big changes

The National Broadband Network has always been a hot political issue in Australian politics and with the election of the new Federal government the often delayed project is being reviewed.

What does this mean for communities and businesses struggling with inadequate internet connections? Join Tony Delroy and Paul Wallbank from 10pm, October 17 on ABC Local Radio across Australia.

If you missed the program, you can listen to it as a podcast through the ABC Tony Delroy’s Nightlife page.

Some of the questions Tony and Paul be covering include;

  • Why did we need the NBN in the first place?
  • What’s happened to the NBN since the new government was elected?
  • Why are we are we having political arguments about an infrastructure upgrade?
  • What are the differences between fibre to the node versus fibre to premises?
  • Why is the NBN running so late?
  • How will the coalition’s change the slow rollout?
  • Australia’s come in around 40th on an international survey on Internet use. Is this because of the NBN?

We’ll also be looking at some other topics such a Google’s new advertising plan and how to drop out of it.

We’d love to hear your views so 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. If you’re outside the broadcasting area, you can stream the program through the ABC website.

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Blocking the bad guys – listeners’ questions from ABC Nightlife

Answers to listeners questions on Tony Delroy’s ABC Nightlife tech spot.

Last night’s ABC Nightlife looked at how email is evolving but most of our callers were concerned with configuring their email, anti-virus programs and blocking adverts on the web.

The audio of the program is available through the ABC website.

As usual, it’s tough to answer all the questions on live radio so here’s the ones from listeners Tony and I said we’d get back to.

Ad blockers

Website owners are desperately trying to find ways to make money from their sites, unfortunately its proving difficult so we’re seeing increasingly intrusive ads trying to distract us while we surf the web.

A number of Tony’s callers asked about adblocking programs to get rid of these irritating ads and there’s a few paid and free solutions available for computer users.

The most popular solution is Adblock, a plug in available for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Android. The developers have a handy video guide to installing and configuring their product.

For Internet Explorer users, Simple Adblock is a plug in that should work with their browser.

Be aware with ad blocking programs that they may change the layout of the sites you visit so be prepared for some strange looking pages.

Also keep in mind that website owners are desperately trying to find ways to pay the bills, so you won’t stop the more cunning ads or sponsored content that pretends to be real news. You might also put a few online media sites out of business.

Anti-Virus programs

One common question from Nightlife listeners are what anti virus programs should they use.

Probably the simplest for Windows users is Microsoft Security Essentials or the free AVG Anti-Virus. For OSX Users, Clam AV and Sophos’ Free Anti Virus for Mac will do the job.

If you have Norton or McAfee anti virus programs on your Windows PC, then getting rid of the software is not straightforward. After uninstalling the software, you’ll have to run their removal tools which are available from the Symantec (Norton) or McAfee websites. Read the instructions carefully.

Switching to Hotmail

A curious thing about Microsoft is how they like to irritate loyal customers with interface changes that leave everyone confused. Hotmail users are among the latest victims after the company migrated them to the Outlook.com platform.

Deborah called in to ask how she could switch back to Hotmail from Outlook.com – sadly the official line from Microsoft is “you can’t”. It appears that all of the work arounds to get Hotmail back have also been closed down and the old service is no more.

For Deborah, the choice is to either get used to Outlook.com or investigate other online mail services like Gmail or Yahoo!.

The next ABC Nightlife will be on in around five weeks. Hope you can join us then.

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ABC Nightlife technology – April 2013

For the April Nightlife tech spot Tony Delroy and I be talking about the mobile phone turning 40, the end of the Internet and Windows 8.

For the April 2013 Nighlife spot Tony Delroy and I looked at the mobile phone turning 40, Windows 8 coming to an end, Blackberry’s chances of succeeding and what happens when the internet goes dark.

Danny Hillis gives a great discussion of what could happen if the internet was turned off along with the history of the net in this TED talk.

If you missed the show, you can download it from the Nightlife website.The next show will be on May 16 and we hope you can join us then.

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