Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i TechLife

CLIMATE CHANGE COULD BE MAKING US GRUMPY JUST... CHILL OUT, MATE. Lack of sleep on a hot night can leave the best of us feeling grumpy the next day, but a new study is suggesting that people’s personalities can be shaped by the climate of the place they grew up in. Scientists from Peking University, Beijing, conducted separate studies in two different parts of the world — China and the US — and found that those who grew up in milder climes were, in general, emotionally stable, industrious, agreeable and open to new experiences, compared to those who grew up in harsher climates. The scientists have stated that the temperature of the locales could be a “potential” explanation and concede that cultural differences could also play a part. They agree…

[ ABRACADABRA ] Genie History Search SEARCHING BROWSER HISTORY MADE EASY. Free | geniehistorysearch.com THE INTERNET — there’s so much information on there and we keep browsing through so many websites that it’s hard to keep track of what we saw where. It’s harder still if you’re not in the habit of bookmarking, or saving bits and bobs you need in some kind of indexing app (like Index — issue 70, page 38). Genie History Search, a Chrome plugin, tries to take the pain out of finding the web pages you need when you want them quickly. For example, if you’ve been hunting down the best Chrome extensions and opened too many tabs, just click on the plugin’s blue lamp icon and type in your search criteria — “browser extensions”…

Max and the Magic Marker GET DRAWN INTO MAX’S WORLD. $2.99 | maxandthemagicmarker.com A RE-RELEASE OF a game from 2010, with few changes other than updates for modern versions of iOS, poses an interesting question: Can such a veteran of the App Store still entertain the audiences of 2017 and beyond? The answer is a simple ‘yes’. Max may be getting on a bit, but his mid-’00s haircut is probably his biggest flaw. This is a left-to-right platformer enlivened by the collection of ink for the titular paranormal pen. You can use a finger to move the marker, drawing in extra platforms so Max can access otherwise unreachable areas. The more ink you have, the more you can draw. Your drawings become a part of the world, so you can…

THE BOOK 2’S BATTERY LIFE IS ALSO ADMIRABLE, RANGING FROM 7 TO 10 HOURS IN OUR TESTS — SOMETHING THAT’S HELPED ALONG BY THAT SECOND BATTERY UNDERNEATH THE KEYBOARD. WITHOUT THAT, THE RUNTIME’S CUT IN HALF — WHICH IS STILL NOT BAD FOR A LARGE-SCREEN TABLET. Microsoft Surface Book 2 (13-inch) IT’S SINGING FROM THE SAME SONGBOOK, BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE MICROSOFT’S REVISED 2-IN-1 SOUND ANY LESS SWEET. MICROSOFT’S ORIGINAL SURFACE Book is going on a couple of years old now, so it was definitely due for a refresh, and that’s basically what you get with this new model. In fact, at a glance, the 2 is nigh-indistinguishable from its predecessor — both 2-in-1s offer a main detachable 13.5-inch (3,000 x 2,000- pixel) tablet alongside a matching keyboard base, which…

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT YOU ALREADY HAVE THE MOST EXPENSIVE PART OF THE EQUATION — THE CAMERA — IN YOUR POSSESSION ALREADY WITH CAPABLE CAMERAS now in the hands of almost everyone via their smartphones, photography has become a part of everyday life. What’s become evident over the past year or so is that the baseline level of photography skills has also risen — helped along in no small part by smartphone manufacturers, who’ve made tweaking settings and functions as simple as possible. Where previously you needed a standalone camera and a pretty advanced level of knowledge to shoot panoramas, time-lapse sequences and portraits with background blur, the latest generation of smartphones make this is as easy as a tap on the touchscreen. These advanced new features have opened…

THESE DAYS, APPLE makes quite a big deal about how a lot of its apps are broadly the same on macOS and iOS. Even if you’re armed with just an iPhone, you get the majority of GarageBand or Numbers features in the palm of your hand — which is great until you need to use some of the bits Apple left out. Given its relative simplicity on the Mac, it’s perhaps surprising to realise Contacts isn’t quite as feature-rich on the iPhone and iPad. Sure, you can easily access all of your contacts (assuming you’re using iCloud, that is), and the interface is all very swish. But can you create groups? Nope. What about smart groups? No way. Well, can you export contacts in a range of formats? No. How…

WHILE YOUR HOME internet connection might have unlimited downloads, it’s a pretty safe bet that’s the same is not the case for your mobile. Most mobile accounts don’t just charge you a little extra for downloads above the limit, either — they charge you through the nose for even small amounts of data. If you’ve ever had a major mobile bill shock, it’s probably streaming media that’s to blame. Thankfully, pretty much all of the major streaming services have a solution to the bandwidth crunch on mobiles: offline viewing. Offline viewing is perfect if you want to watch stuff on the train on the way to work, or if you’re going on holidays and you want to load up some shows to keep the kids entertained. So how do you…

WIDE-ANGLE CONVERSION LENS More likely to be seen as an add-on for a point-and-shoot camera, but there are some available for interchangeable lenses. CLOSE-UP DIOPTER These screw into the front of the lens like a regular filter but, as the name suggests, are a cheap and cheerful entry into macro photography. REVERSING RING These allow you to reverse the lens on the camera to create extreme close-ups. LENS A lens mount adapter allows you to combine lenses and cameras from different systems. TILT-SHIFT ADAPTER These advanced mount converters turn lenses designed for large sensors into tilt-shift lenses on smaller-sensor cameras. EXTENSION TUBES These tubes are available in various sizes and are typically supplied in groups of three. They can be used either individually or stacked. LENS MOUNT ADAPTER Third-party options…

PROUDLY BROUGHT TO YOU BY The TechLife team finds the best budget, value and performance products, and the latest releases in the top technology categories. If you believe there are other products that deserve the title in any of the tech categories, let us know and give us your reasons why in 50 words or less. Equally, if there’s a hot new product that’s worthy of attention, we want to know. Send your email to techlife@futurenet.com.…

ASHAMPOO BURNING STUDIO 2018 & ABELSSOFT YOUTUBE SONG DOWNLOADER RIP, BURN AND ARCHIVE WITH EASE A COMPLETELY REDESIGNED UPDATE TO ASHAMPOO BURNING STUDIO 2018 FULL VERSION WORTH $40. Ashampoo Burning Studio 2018 is a safe and versatile burning application. At its core lies the powerful burning engine that allows users to burn data of any type to all common disc types with a high degree of safety and speed. This includes files, movies, music and backups. High-volume formats such as BDXL or high-security discs like M-Disc are also supported. Users can furthermore rip audio discs and rename and burn tracks in the process complete with individual playlists and custom designed covers. Disc spanning helps spread data that exceeds the capacity of a single disc such as huge photo, document or…

#1 JUST A FEW YEARS AFTER LAUNCH, NETFLIX IS ALREADY AUSTRALIA’S FAVOURITE BRAND The latest results for the YouGov Brand Advocacy Rankings have arrived, and it turns out that Australians are huge fans of Netflix. The 2017 survey found that people were more likely to recommend Netflix to their friends or family than any other brand, followed by Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Toyota, then Air New Zealand, respectively. “A recommendation from friends or family is one of the strongest votes of confidence it is possible to give to a brand”, states YouGov, explaining the rationale behind their rankings. $ 1.2 billion COST OF THE VALUABLES THAT AUSTRALIANS LOST IN THE LAST YEAR The company behind the clever little Bluetooth tracking device Tile has conducted some research on how often Aussies lose…

IF YOU HAVE A GOOGLE HOME (OR HOME MINI), YOU CAN ADD THE LINK 10 TO THE GOOGLE SPEAKER VIA THE HOME APP AND HAVE A MULTI-ROOM SETUP. WITH GOOGLE ASSISTANT now available to third-party speaker manufacturers, it was only a matter of time before those third-party manufacturers decided to integrate the digital assistant into their speakers. The problem is — and this includes both Google Home and Home Mini — the voice-activated smart speakers need to be tethered to the mains. That means you can’t take them to your mates’ place for a BBQ in their backyard, or to the beach to get the latest updates on tides and surf conditions. Enter JBL, the first big-name brand to launch a third-party Google Assistant-powered smart speaker that isn’t just portable,…

SORE MUSCLES ARE an indication of excessive physical strain, but what happens when your brain is overworked? It may not be a muscle, but the brain has its limits, too. If you make decisions at work or at home all day, every day, you could end up suffering from decision fatigue — a psychological condition that will increasingly make it hard for you to produce rational, well thought-out conclusions. Decision fatigue can cause your brain to shut down, so to speak, leading to irrational behaviour, which, in turn, could bring a world of trouble affecting both your personal and professional life. SIGNS OF DECISION FATIGUE Watching decision fatigue take its toll on someone else is easy — you’ll find the quality of decisions deteriorating as the day progresses, their behaviour…

READING OR WATCHING the news can only give you so much context and depth to any given story (as the platforms are normally limited by time or space) and it’s wise to never rely on your friends or colleagues entirely for all your facts. So why not turn to podcasts? One of the best things about the medium is how they can deliver information in an easy-to-digest fashion — straight to your brain, more or less — from a number of different sources, and be entertaining. Whether on your daily commute, a lunch break, while you’re cooking or even when working out at the gym, podcasts are perfect for all sorts of topics, as this column has hopefully proved so far. Well, our mission this month is to introduce you…

Re.photos CREATE INTERACTIVE IMAGES COMPARING THEN AND NOW. Free | www.re.photos.com Despite how niche it may sound, you’re likely to have stumbled across ‘rephotography’ at some point already. It is the art of taking the same photo years after the original, and is often presented as a single image with a draggable slider, allowing you to view the same place, person or object at different times. The website, Re.photos, is designed to help with this process by automatically creating one of these sliding, interactive images based on a pair of photos that you upload and four common anchor points they share. In the future, the designer hopes to automate the anchor point selection process, but currently the user is required to enter this information. Once you’ve registered an account, you…

OUR MOBILE DEVICES give us the power to capture memories and share them instantly, dramatically changing the way we express ourselves. And manufacturers are catering to the growing need for better cameras right in our pockets, with more and more smartphones packing small and compact lenses alongside powerful processors to capture sharper, crisper images — and in the process, giving traditional compacts a run for their money. In fact, gone are the days when you needed to carry a separate shooter on your travels. If you’re armed with your smartphone, you’re all set. With smartphone photography, you don’t have to worry so much about equipment — lenses, filters, tripods and so on — and can actually concentrate on composition to produce works of art. The image quality may not match…

WHILE AN EVERYDAY inkjet can produce passable photo prints on quality paper, they are usually worse quality and more expensive than getting them printed at Officeworks (or similar). But there are also a huge range of models that are photo focused — from the very affordable, totally portable or high-end, wide-format printers. We’ve tested the full variety, covering the advantages and disadvantages of each. Some offer extra ink colours for more accurate photos, others have software that makes it easy to print directly from your phone. There are printers designed to make it very cheap to produce bulk photos at home, through to models that can print out mini posters. There are even pocket-sized battery printers that can print photos on the go without needing any ink at all. Many…

[ MAC ] Black screen iMac lockout At seemingly random times, the display of my iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011) goes completely black, and the system is then unusable, so I have to perform a forced shutdown using its power button. This iMac has a Radeon HD 6770M graphics card. Why is this happening? [ BOB PRINGLE ] Ian Sleightholm replies: Given its vintage, a dying graphics card or other hardware could be to blame. Several models of graphics cards have suffered premature failure, probably because of the introduction of lead-free solder, and some have had their warranties extended as a result. Before you take the Mac in for repair, check its logs in Console. After this next happens and the Mac has restarted, open Console and search for BOOT_TIME, which…

RANSOMWARE CONTINUES TO be the biggest threat to home user computer security in 2018. If you’ve been hit, you know how devastating it can be: once you’re infected, there is often very little recourse other than to pay and hope the ransomware developer honours the bargain. So this month, we’re going to go over the three best tools you have to protect yourself from ransomware in 2018: backup software, anti-malware and anti-ransomware. Let’s start with backup tools. BACKUP The very best protection you have against ransomware is to keep a copy (or two) of your important files. In other words: back up your damn computer...! What’s more, those files have to be stored where the ransomware can’t find them. You can’t just back them up to another drive on the…

Kodak Super8 cam GOING BACK TO THE GOOD OL’ DAYS? tinyurl.com/tla73-super8 It may seem something of a cheap shot to label something centred on tickling the nostalgia bone as ‘ridiculous’ — but in the age of filters and post-production wizardry, you do have to wonder why anyone would actively seek out technology that was, well... out-dated. Claiming to “inspire people everywhere to create”, Kodak’s Super 8 and fully analog video camera is here to take on the digital realm. Well, almost fully analog. It does incorporate some digital conveniences, such as an SD card slot, HDMI port and a digital display. Part of the Kodak Super 8 Revival Initiative, this camera is apparently being “applauded by the industry’s top directors”. However, regardless of how much of a hullabaloo this device…

On NBN connections and high-tech uses for broomsticks... I thought I’d write in about my experience with the NBN. I live in the Blue Mountains and have had the NBN for about a year now. The service itself is a great help for me, as I often work from home and need to download big files — which now doesn’t take an eternity. However, I wish I had something nice to say about the people and the process surrounding the NBN. Firstly, I live on a slope, meaning the overhead cable dips down across the street towards my house. As my street is a sleepy cul-de-sac, this wouldn’t normally be a problem (with only cars passing below), but now that there’s a house being built next-door, many large trucks regularly…

INTERNET GIANTS LIKE Facebook, Google and Twitter have been in the spotlight for their role in politics, but now Australia wants to investigate these companies for a very different reason — their impact on the country’s news services. With traditional print media being squeezed out by online news sources, and more advertising money being siphoned into digital media leading to journalism job cuts, the Federal Government has instructed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to probe into the effect distributors like Facebook and Google have on competition in the media and advertising industry. “We will examine whether platforms are exercising market power in commercial dealings to the detriment of consumers, media content creators and advertisers,” ACCC chair Rod Sims said in a statement. Although Google is looking “forward to…

AT CHIP-MAKER QUALCOMM’S annual Tech Summit in December, ASUS and HP showed off the very first Snapdragon-powered Windows 10 notebooks, signalling the second attempt at a Microsoft and ARM team-up. Microsoft first tested the ARM waters back in 2012 with the Surface RT tablet, although that venture ultimately proved unsuccessful due to the locked-down Windows RT operating system and inability to run anything outside of Windows Store apps — where the selection was lacklustre. These new ARM devices could finally deliver on the concept, with the 2-in-1s ASUS and HP demoed promising over 20-hours of battery life, the ability to instantly wake with an always-on state and, most significantly, operate on a full version of Windows 10 that can still run all Windows apps. While Microsoft has partnered with Qualcomm…

Desktop Infinity Mirror A MAGICAL PORTAL TO SIT ON YOUR DESK. core-electronics.com.au | Goal: $1,000 | Raised: $10,156 from 109 backers | RRP: $95 When we were trawling through the hundreds of crowdfunding projects online, trying to find something interesting, we have to admit that we came to a crashing halt when we found the Infinity Mirror. For the first full minute, we couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but we also knew we didn’t entirely care. It looks awesome. Maker kits are quite popular, and there’s a whole branch of people who enjoy getting their hands dirty with a bit of tech, some screws and a spanner (just ask our resident maker Lindsay Handmer). The great thing about the Infinity Mirror, however, is that it can be made…

ONLY THE LUCKY (or very careful!) few have never dropped and broken a smartphone screen — it’s an easy-to-do but ultimately costly mistake. Just as bad is getting it wet, or other accidental damage. Fortunately, though, a lot of the fixes are relatively easy as a DIY project, and there are loads of online guides and resources to help out. REPAIR RESOURCES Our go-to is iFixit.com, which has full-on teardown and repair guides for just about every major phone, as well as other tech. If you can’t find your particular model, try just doing a Google search, such as “Huawei P10 broken screen”. iFixit typically lists the tools and other parts you need as well, and sometimes has links to buy them. YouTube.com also has loads of repair and teardown…

CPU Affordable laptops tend to have lower-end CPUs that are great for editing documents and browsing the web, but not more demanding applications. RAM Although 2GB of RAM will suffice, look for at least 4GB to handle memory-hungry apps and browsers, such as Chrome. RESOLUTION For larger screens, 1,920 x 1,080 is ideal, but on smaller 11-inch and 12-inch panels, 1,366 x 768 is fairly sharp. STORAGE Many affordable laptops use smaller eMMC SSDs (avoid mechanical HDDs if possible), but storage can be expanded via microSD. 2-IN-1 A 2-in-1 with touchscreen is great if you need tablet mode, but otherwise doing without reduces the cost and improves battery life. PORTABILITY The smaller affordable laptops can be easily slipped into a bag, but the 14-inch and 15-inch models are usually much…

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim THE CLASSIC RPG GOES BIG AND SMALL, WITH CONSISTENT RESULTS. $99.95 | Switch,PSVR | www.theelderscrolls.com BETHESDA’S MISSION TO get Skyrim running on every feasible electronic device is working out quite well. The original game launched in 2011 for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, but since then, it’s made the leap to PS4, Xbox One and now the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation VR. Unlike those next-gen remasters, these newer re-issues are worth revisiting, if only to see whether Skyrim can work both in handheld mode and in virtual reality. As far as the Nintendo Switch goes, Skyrim is a perfect fit. Not only does the game’s sprawling, mission-centric design work well for on-the-go gaming, but the graphics aren’t so cutting edge that the Switch struggles. The…

TORNADOS ARE NOT uncommon in the southeastern regions of South Australia. You wouldn’t exactly call it ‘Tornado Alley’, but the Bureau of Meteorology does consider the area one of Australia’s more likely locations for twisters to touch down. Yet when two tornados 170km apart ripped through the area during the afternoon of September 28th, 2016, taking down high-voltage electrical transmission lines, the ramifications of the state-wide blackout that followed are still being felt today. No matter where you stand on the ‘renewables vs fossil fuels’ debate, our ever-growing reliance on tech has created an equally-insatiable demand for energy. While governments and businesses determine how best to create that energy on an industrial scale, research underway today could revolutionise the way we power much of our tech in the future —…

THE WINDOWS CONTEXT menu, which appears when you right-click a file or folder, is packed with handy tools. Not only can you open, copy or delete a file or folder using it, you can also use it to pin items to the Taskbar for quick access, scan them for viruses with Windows Defender (very useful if it’s something you’ve just downloaded), or create a handy shortcut. The context menu is capable of so much more, though. With a few extra programs, you can transform this humble list into a powerful resource that will save you time and make everyday tasks effortless. You can customise the Windows tools available when you right-click a file, making it easier to power down your PC, change properties, or empty the Recycle Bin. Alternatively, if…

[ STEP BY STEP ] COLOUR-CORRECT A SET OF PHOTOS LEARN HOW TO FIX WHITE BALANCE BOTH IN A SINGLE PHOTO AND AN ENTIRE SET... 01 USE THE WHITE BALANCE TOOL Navigate to a folder of similarly lit images in Adobe Bridge. Right-click on an image and select ‘Open In Camera Raw’ from the resulting pop-up menu, then grab the White Balance tool from the toolbar. Click over a neutral grey point (or drag a box to sample a wider area). Click Done to close the image and go back to Bridge. 02 COPY AND PASTE THE FIX Right-click over the edited photo and choose ‘Develop Settings > Copy Settings’ from the pop-up menu. Next Shift-click between the first and last photo in the set to select them all, then…