Everybody is familiar with Google on their phones and computers, but are you interested in a Google TV? This week I spoke to Andre Iannuzzi from Hisense about their new range of Vision Series TVs, the first Google Certified Smart TVs. The Vision range of TVs are available in 4K and HD options and let you use Google's services right from the TV. You can bookmark pages across devices from the Chrome browser and access your Google Play purchases including music and movies.
Social media sites such as Facebook give us the ability to connect with the people around us and share our experiences. But do these sites have a dark side? I caught up with the University of Queensland's Dr Stephanie Tobin, who has produced a new study that sheds some light on the ways in which social media can lower users' self esteem and make them feel ignored.
As Australian society becomes more connected the threat from cyberattacks is rapidly increasing. In a new report the CSIRO is warning of potential vulnerabilities, from attacks on the energy grid to online healthcare fraud. The CSIRO's James Deverell caught me up on the threats and on what we need to do about them.
Kyle asked me whether he needs to be worried about image burn-in on his plasma TV.
Kyle, image burn-in has been a real problem on TVs, especially for plasma and CRT sets. If a static image remained on your TV too long it could burn into the screen’s phosphors and remain there, in some cases permanently. This has been a problem for older sets, however newer TVs no longer have this same issue, or at least it takes much longer for instances to occur.
With a plasma TV, try to minimise the time the screen is showing a static image. Don’t leave the TV paused on a single shot for too long. Some models of TV have solutions for this. For example, Samsung’s pixel shift feature moves the screens pixels periodically to minimise burn-in. The movement is so subtle that you won’t notice it. When watching 4:3 video you can often set the side bars to grey rather than white which makes the side bars less likely to burn in. Your best bet is to check your TV’s manual to see what image burn in protection features it has.
Steve's wife upgraded from an iPhone to an Android phone. Now she cannot receive messages sent from Apple devices.
Steve, a lot of users have reported similar issues. When you port your existing number from iPhone to Android, texts from iPhone users may not come through to your Android device. This happens because Apple uses a proprietary technology for SMS called iMessage. All iPhones send messages as an iMessage by default. Because iMessage only works on Apple devices the message will not go through to other brand devices. To fix this you need to deactivate iMessage.
1) If you’ve still got access to your old iPhone: make sure it’s connected to the internet. Go into ‘Settings > Messages’ and for ‘iMessage’ move the slider to ‘Off’
2) You’ll need to do this on all your Apple devices that are registered to the same Apple ID as the phone, so you’ll need to deactivate iMessage on any connected iPads as well.
3) If you no longer have access to your phone: Go to ‘https://supportprofile.apple.com/MySupportProfile.do. Then log in with your Apple ID and Password. Select the product you need to de-register i.e. your iPhone and click ‘Unregister’.