Life & Technology

Spoke with Damien Murphy on 3D television for A Current Affair. I know I’ve talked about this ad nauseam since CES, but the news has gone mainstream.

Some pundits are putting it out there that this technology will not take off for up to five years. Having been to CES, I can assure you that the big push this year, as far as vendors are concerned, is 3D television.

Sure, there will be the initial take-up by those who like to be the first to have this type of technology, and once enough of these sets have been bought, then the prices will come down. Will vendors sell an absolutely truckload this year? Probably not. But then again, when LCDs and plasmas first came onboard, it took time for them to be the norm, too.

Once you have experienced 3D television, you’ll see that vendors are serious about the technology, and is more than just gimmick value that its prototype was seen as back in the 1950s

Clip courtesy of the The Today Show

Spoke with Karl on the Today Show this morning about a new device out of the US called Protector, which is a service offered by the company that brought us the Taser volt gun, but no-where near as dangerous!

Protector works on multiple devices, each managed through an intuitive control panel accessible through a smart phone, PC, MAC or smart TV. Parents can control who their children interact with and monitor their mobile phone activity and driving behavior at any time – and change permissions and settings in real time

Protector works by allowing parents to vet calls on their child’s mobile phone. It basically gives parents control over who their child is in contact with over the mobile network. Parents will get an incoming call via the service so they can approve of the caller. This is also true of texts, too. If they approve of the caller, then the call can go through. However before kids get too upset at every called being monitored, there is a ‘favourites’ function that can be set up by a parent that allows certain callers to go forward.

And just to make sure that nothing really untoward is happening, the company has set up an algorithm that can tell if your child is sending or receiving nude photographs.

Finally there are its GPS capabilities, which not only allows you to see where you teenager is, but if they are driving, this application apparently records the speeds you child has done in their car, and the accelerometer records if the car has had a fender bender. As the application is not available in the country yet, I have yet to have a play with it, but when it comes out, it will certainly be worth checking out.

Spoke with Steve Liebmann about CES and the different technologies that came out of the show. Talked about 3D TV of course, which is already mentioned several times recently on the blog, while e-Readers are going to huge this year. There will be a stoush between Google, Amazon and Barnes and Noble over content, let alone the vendors trying to push their latest product in this ever increasing space.

Had a few calls today. Les was wondering about digital television and when it was going to go ahead. He asked because he needed to know when to get ready for the roll out. I do know that analogue is being switched off in 2013 and that varying towns, cities and states are turning off gradually over that time. I’d suggest getting a television with a built-in digital receiver or a set-top box.

Raymond is having a problem with sending his email in that it keeps on sending the file but is not leaving his out box. I think it is a problem with his server not telling his client (in this case Outlook) that the file has been sent. I suggested he download Thunderbird and have a crack at sending his emails that way. If that doesn’t solve the problem, he should give me a call next week on the show and I’ll suggest another avenue.

Finally, there was Friday who was having problems opening wmv files that were part of her incoming emails. One thing you can do is open the file in VLC (if a file doesn’t open, usually a prompt appears asking you how you would like to open it and will give you a choice, one being VLC). Other than that I think Friday has probably got an older version wmv and needs to upgrade.