Life & Technology

Saw Avatar in 3D on Friday night.

The movie is amazing. The story is great, and does well enough to keep your attention in and out of the amazing visuals you are exposed to the entire way through. If you are planning to see Avatar, you have to see it in 3D.

If you have seen the movie, saw it in 3D and loved it, well I have a treat for you. 2010 is the year of 3D. Home tv’s will be launching with 3D features built in. You’ll be able to watch movies in 3D, and in future tv networks will be broadcasting events in 3D.

In January this year, the NCAA and Sony carried out a pilot to broadcast the Football final (also known as the Orange Bowl) in 3D. To watch the match Sony supplied 3D camera’s at the football ground, fed the images into a their processing equipment and piped the vision into a 3D enabled cinema. The selected viewers who saw the match were interviewed as they left the cinema and their feedback was extremely positive.

So, the short message here is that 3D is coming fast. The only thing holding it back is cost, and we all know that cost is always cured with time. Next year you willl see the screens that can display 3D arriving in stores, the next thing that will need to arrive is the media that will work with the technology.

Clip courtesy of the The Today Show and Nine News
Went on the Today Show this morning to discuss the most popular YouTube videos of the year with Richard Wilkins. There were a few good ones, but it was no surprise that Britain’s Got Talent’s Susan Boyle stole the show with over 100 million hits. See it here

Spoke with Steve about a couple of new gadgets that are out there in the marketplace. One is the Clocky, which is an alarm clock with wheels. It allows you to hit the snooze button once, then it takes off around the room and you have to catch it.

Then there is the Wii remote charger, which is going to be popular this Christmas because it can charge your Wii remote instead of having to replace batteries all the time. You will have to use rechargeable batteries of course, but this saves the hassle of not only your remote dying during that important stage of a game, but also lessens the impact on the environment by not having a tonne of dead batteries at the tip.

Phone calls included Antoinette who wanted to know the difference between LED and LCD televisions. At its most basic, an LED has better contrast and brighter picture. It will also have a higher price.

Todd was wondering why his Dell computer battery was running out so quickly. This is due to its battery memory getting lower. So what does this mean? Well, when you first buy your laptop it is recommended that you run the battery down and charge it up a few times so it knows how much charge it should have. Todd will probably have to buy a new battery.

Bob wanted to know if he could record what he had saved onto PVR onto a DVD. It depends on the brand, but by and large a PVR is not designed to do so, but with some you can, which I won’t go into here because it would take too long to explain and each brand is different.

Peter bought a set top box for his three-year old 50-inch Panasonic TV, and he now getting a high-pitched sound when he watches the Prime channel. Without seeing it, I wouldn’t like to say what is wrong with it exactly, but I’d suggest it is a set-top box problem and not a television problem.

Finally, Denise mentioned that her husband wants an MP3 player that he can use while he swims. There are a few devices out there – from a headset that sits firmly on your head, through to a little box that you can strap to your waist or arm, which is also very watertight.

On the train coming into work today a close mate calls and says. “I think I am being scammed”. We discuss his situation and sure enough, in my opinion he is being scammed and even he, in all his sceptical judgement was about to throw out $2000 in an online scam of pure brilliance I was almost impressed to see.

The scam was simple, but brilliant. You may of heard of this kind of thing before, but it was a first for me. My friend, let’s call him Tommo (real name hidden to ensure privacy) is selling a motor bike (It’s a nice motor bike too). Tommo gets an email of offer from an online buyer who wants to buy the bike (without seeing the bike of course) and they agree on a price. The scammer then transfers the money to Tommo’s paypal account, and adds another $2000 to the agreed price. Scammer then explains that the $2k extra is for a collection fee he needs to pay his ‘agent’ who will be coming to collect the bike on his behalf. Scammer needs Tommo to send the $2k via Western Union to a contact in London and ‘as soon as this is done, the total amount in the Paypal will be released’. However, because none of the money is released, the scammer tells Tommo to use $2k of his own money, and he will get the whole sum back once the deal has been finalised.

Now if you are picking up that this is smelling dodgy, then we are both on the same page.

Paypal has a very popular escrow service that is great when buying and selling products. However, needing to send cash via Western Union BEFORE Paypal will automatically release escrow funds – not likely.

So, there you have it. Another creative scam that almost netted $2000 from a person I know to be extremely sceptical and highly unlikely to get scammed. Be warned.