Life & Technology – 2GB 6th March, 2016

The Raspberry Pi micro-computer is one of the coolest gadgets to have popped up in recent years. Essentially, it’s a credit card sized, barebones device that only costs USD$35 and has been designed for educational, enthusiasts, and tinkerers. The latest version of the Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi 3, is now available, and offers even more bang for buck. The tiny device now ships with a 64-bit processor, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth while maintaining its predecessors price-tag. It’s about AUD$60 here, and you can read more about it on CyberShack.

 

I’ve had a few more calls about the travel I adapter I use overseas. It’s Belkin’s International Surge Protector. You can grab it from our sponsor, Harvey Norman, here.

 

Taxi booking app GoCatch is expanding into ridesharing with a service called Go Car. This week, I sat down with GoCatch CEO Ned Moorfield to learn about how this service differs from Uber, and what the advantages of having an Australian streaming service are. You can read more about GoCar here.

 

 

You might not have heard of it, but Chinese smartphone manufacturer OPPO is working on some incredible tech. One of the company’s latest announcements is “superfast charging” that will enable a phone to go from flat to full in just 15 minutes. This week I was joined by OPPO Australia Marketing Director Michael Tran to chat about how this works.

 

 

Google’s Chromecast has become an essential accessory in the age of streaming video, and the company’s now refreshed the family with not one, but two new devices. This week I spoke to Google Australia Communications Manager Shane Treeves about what’s changed.

 

 

You can read our review of the new Chromecast here, and our review of the Chromecast Audio here.

 

Kiddle.co (.co not .com) is a kid friendly search-engine based on Google. In addition to having a permanently enforced safe search, Kiddle will complete remove the results for certain words – such as “boobs” or “sex”, and tell users they searched for “a bad word” instead, whereas safe search would still bring back a Wikipedia page, for example.

 

In addition to providing kid safe results, the search engine gives prominence to content specifically written for children, and will prioritize it in results. It’s not perfect, but worth a look if you have kids!