Innehållsförteckning för June 2022 från TechLife

How about some good stuff that will make your digital and online life so much better? At time of writing, Australia is bracing for a very tough Federal election. No, don’t worry, I’m not going to get too political at you, but I will say that one of the key talking points in the lead-up to May 21 will be cost of living pressures. We’re all feeling it – so how about some good stuff that will make your digital and online life so much better, and not cost you anything? Well, this issue we have a double-helping of free apps! First up, we’ve a got list of free and quite superior software to replace some of the older standby programs many of us have been using for years. And…

Android antivirus apps caught spreading their own malware Google has removed a number of fake Android antivirus apps from the Play Store after it was discovered they were being used as a vehicle for malware distribution. According to Check Point Research, the company responsible for the discovery, at least half a dozen antivirus apps available on the official Android marketplace were being used to spread banking malware. The apps appear to be of Russian origin. Microsoft Edge just steamed past a major rival As the browser wars rage on, Microsoft Edge is one step closer to challenging Google Chrome as it has finally surpassed another major rival. According to data from the web analytics service StatCounter, Microsoft’s browser is now used on 9.65 percent of all desktops worldwide which still…

Can tech help me train my fighting skill? Aiden English Alright, reader. You want to fight? Guru will see you outside, bub. Except he won’t, because in truth GaGu is actually some kind of pathetic shivering jelly, terrified of anything even resembling combat. Spook him and he faints like a goat, at which point you’re basically free to kick him in the face. Please don’t. He has a note from his mum. Even more supremely punchable than GaGu is the classic Century Bob (between around $500 and $750, depending on if you want the big one), which is basically an eerie and extremely ugly armless flesh-coloured man, sliced-off at the waist and jammed on to a base. The tech doesn’t stretch far beyond ‘you can punch this’, and Guru may…

A new Star Trek game seems to have leaked thanks to a convention poster On April 7, Star Trek fan site TrekCore.com revealed a banner at the ongoing Star Trek convention in Chicago. The banner appears to reveal Star Trek Prodigy Supernova as a brand new Star Trek video game, in development at Tessera Studios and coming to PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch platforms. Tessera Studios is a developer founded in 2017 and based in Madrid, Spain. Xbox Series X can now switch your TV input with the press of a controller button Until now, the only way to switch the input while playing Xbox games is to find your TV remote. But no longer. As Xbox engineering lead Eden Marie revealed on Twitter, all you have to do…

$999, www.hp.com There’s a lot the HP Chromebook x2 11 can do. Launched in August 2021, this HP Chromebook follows other 2-in-1 portables that tout a detachable keyboard design that makes them feel more like tablets that can be transformed into a laptop – much like Apple’s higher-end iPads and the Surface Pro. The whole detachable setup makes the HP Chromebook x2 11 extremely versatile, and it’s just as great to use in tablet mode as it is in laptop mode. It’s a brilliant approach to the hybrid laptop model, especially since most 2-in-1 laptops with non-detachable keyboards aren’t really all that convenient to use as tablets. On a Chromebook, the ChromeOS interface is just as easy to use in tablet mode as in laptop mode. But, with strong rivals…

$1,099, global.blackshark.com The Xiaomi Black Shark 4 Pro is not exactly brand new. The gaming phone was first announced in March 2021 and was, at that time, only available in China. The global launch, according to plan, is happening now. Consequently, there are aspects of the phone that have a distinctive 2021 feel to them, but other parts of the phone are enticing enough to attract some users. As with previous entries in the Black Shark series, this phone comes with some neat extras for gamers. Let’s start with the positives of this phone: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset that powers it may be a 2021 flagship processor, but it’s still quite capable when it comes to demanding tasks and intensive games, especially when it is complemented by generous servings…

$8,995, www.samsung.com/au Last year, Samsung showed us its new Neo QLED TV with Quantum Matrix Mini LED technology and assured us that it would be the best on the market. It involved replacing the traditional LED backlighting system – which shines through the screen obliterating contrast and causing distracting halos around bright objects on dark backgrounds – with small zones that contained thousands of mini LEDs. The theory was that the more-refined backlighting would cut down on light bleed and improve contrast but, because all the mini LEDs in a zone fired up all at once, it didn’t work well and felt very ‘Generation 1.0.’ Now, we have ‘Quantum Matrix Technology Pro’, which offers a higher density mini of LEDs and a technology called ‘Shape Adaptive Light’ that finally adjusts…

MANY OF THE best-loved apps on our devices haven’t cost us a cent. They make our Macs work the way we want them to, make the internet considerably less annoying, protect our privacy, guide us through projects, and help us create all kinds of things. They provide hours of entertainment, help preserve our old home videos and introduce us to people, publications and podcasts from around the world. The apps that you’ll discover over the next few pages aren’t “freemium”, where the free version of the app isn’t really usable without in-app purchases or subscriptions. Instead, most are free as in genuinely gratis, or are funded by unobtrusive advertising, and the ones that do have paid-for versions are still useful in their own right. So let’s discover the best free…

VECTORNATOR From vectornator.io Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS Vectornator is a free, fully featured Adobe Illustrator-style vector-drawing and editing app, and the developers say it’ll remain free until they work out how or if they’re going to make money from it. No matter what kind of Apple device you design with, you’ll love using Vectornator on it – but, be warned, older Macs can’t join the Vectornator party, as you need macOS 11 Big Sur or later to use it. GIMP FOR MAC From gimp.org Available on Mac The open-source GIMP image editor used to be a bit of a faff on the Mac, but it’s now easier to install, learn, and use. It’s still a little buggy compared to commercial image editors, but then again those cost money and…

TELEGRAM From telegram.org Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS Telegram promises to be the fastest message system on Earth, with end-to-end encryption. It syncs across all your devices and offers unlimited file-sharing and storage, and if you start typing on one device you can continue instantly on another. TWITTER From twitter.com Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS The Mac app isn’t great – stick with the website – but the iOS and iPadOS versions of the Twitter app are easy to use and do everything you’d expect; hashtags, trends, image and link-sharing, following, and, of course, muting and blocking too. INSTAGRAM From instagram.com Available on iOS The “cooler” Facebook that it’s okay to like doesn’t seem to suffer from the same problems as the main Facebook app or website. That’s…

AMPHETAMINE From Mac App Store Available on Mac Amphetamine is designed to keep your Mac awake even when it wants to sleep, and you can use it to keep connected displays awake too. You can enable Amphetamine for specific apps or for specific tasks, so for example you might want your Mac to stay awake while you’re using headphones or prevent the main display from going to sleep when a particular app is open. It’s really easy to use but it’s also packed with options and statistics. ONYX From titanium–software.fr Available on Mac OnyX is an excellent app for cleaning up your Mac’s temporary files, caches, and other data, as well as changing how key apps work and getting rid of problematic files. But be cautious: if you’re unsure of…

WHAT YOU NEED Dropbox account TIME REQUIRED 30 minutes You can create automated folders from scratch or add automation functions to folders you’re already using. This will let you set them to automatically convert files to PDF, organise them into date-based folders and more. One function – tagging – is only available on paid-for accounts, but everything else works with the 2GB free account. Here, we’ll create a new folder and add an automation to it, so that everyone you share it with will be able to read the files it contains. If you don’t yet have a free account, and you want to try it for yourself, sign up at www. dropbox.com. 1 Once an automated folder is up and running, you can upload files to it using the…

LibreOffice Use the same border width across all tools Back in 2012 a LibreOffice developer suggested making the default options for border widths the same across all the suite’s programs. It was a good idea that won support from other developers (see www.snipca.com/41084), so it’s surprising that it took 10 years to be implemented – in LibreOffice 7.3, released in February. From thinnest to thickest (measured in points), these new default options are: Hairline (0.05pt), Very thin (0.5pt), Thin (0.75pt), Medium (1.5pt), Thick (2.25pt), Extra thick (4.5pt). In our screenshot below, we’re changing the border width of a table created in Writer. To do this, right-click inside one of the table’s cells, then select Table Properties at the bottom. Now click the Width dropdown menu, under the Line heading, choose…

GEDCOM provides three fields for storing place data: Place_Name, Place_Latitude, and Place_Longitude. The key field is Place_Name, which stores place data using the following jurisdictional format: place (village, town, or city), county, state, and country. The Place_Latitude and Place_Longitude fields store the geographical coordinates, for placing on a map. Street addresses aren’t recorded as individual Places; they’re added to the Address field of a specific Event with no geocodes pinpointing their exact location, hence our workaround.…

1 Navigation pane Organise your reference materials into collections from here, and save advanced searches to create dynamically updated ‘smart’ collections. 2 Tag selector All tags applied to the items in the middle pane are displayed here. Colour-code tags to give them more prominence. 3 Create new items Use these buttons to create new items using templates, existing files or from ISBN numbers (and other codes). 4 List of items Those items that meet your criteria from the navigation pane, tag selector and keyword search are displayed here. 5 Search tool Perform quick keyword-based searches of a selected collection or your entire library here. Click the down arrow to change the search criteria. 6 Item pane The currently selected item’s details are displayed here, split across four tabs. Info contains…

1 START WEB CAPTURE  Open your web browser and locate the web page you’d like to ‘snip’ to Zotero. Look at the Zotero button in your browser toolbar: if it’s blue, the page can be saved to Zotero as ‘embedded metadata’, which means all the bibliographic information is added to Zotero automatically. Click the button to bring up a tiny pop-up window. 2 SET ITEM DETAILS  The web connector enables you to choose where to save the item. Click the down arrow button, next to the ‘Saving to’ drop-down to expand the box. From here you can choose where to save the page within your library, and add relevant keywords as tag if applicable. When you’re finished, click Done to save the item. 3 SAVE SNAPSHOT  The item will be…

1 To unlock the new Permissions panel in Chrome 100, type chrome:flags in the browser’s address bar then press Enter to access the Experiments page. Find the entry Extensions Menu Access Control 1 , select Enabled 2 and relaunch Chrome. 2 When you visit a website, you’ll see an eye icon 1 next to the jigsaw piece in the extensions toolbar. Click this and select Permissions 2 to see a list of your extensions and whether they’re always active on all sites, just the current site or only when clicked. 3 To change the default permission setting for the website you’re viewing, click ‘Choose your default setting’ 1 . Here you can allow all extensions to read and change data on the site, block them all from doing so or…

As you add more devices to your network, the amount of data that passes across it increases. In its default state, your router (or broadband modem if you don’t have a separate router) will manage your devices as best as it can, giving each one equal attention, even if what it’s doing isn’t particularly important. That can be a problem, as it may mean that a laptop downloading updates in the background, which wouldn’t be greatly impacted if those updates ran a bit more slowly, might be causing your video call to stutter and break up. However, if your router or modem has a Quality of Service (QoS) setting, you should be able to tame your network’s data hogs, so the devices that really need a reliable, steady, uninterrupted connection…

$249, Rode.com For decades Rode has been known around the globe for its quality microphones, and now with the release of its first ever pair of headphones, the Aussie company has taken its pursuit of quality to another category. The Rode NTH-100 is the brand’s first ever pair of headphones and are available now for $249. They’re aimed at audio professionals with their studio grade performance, but appeal to anyone seeking a top-quality listening experience. They’re cabled, closed-back headphones that don’t feature any of the modern conveniences associated with Bluetooth headphones, but their focus on sound, comfort and build quality easily makes up for this. Design The NTH-100 are cabled over-ear headphones, and from the outset you’ll notice they lack features found on many wireless counterparts. There’s no microphone, transport…

We’ve seen our fair share of metaverse novelties, but one company is using the virtual realm to create a more essential communal work environment for its large network of global employees. New AI tech is continuing to surprise us by helping ISS astronauts detect suit damage, bet on the stock market and accurately diagnose Twitter users with depression. If that wasn’t enough Elon Musk outlined he might begin producing humanoid workers as soon as next year and a new book by Wired writer Andy Greenberg details the crypto transaction tracking apps that are bringing down some of the worst criminals on the dark web. XR Accenture Nth Floor IT services company builds its own metaverse to help onboard new employees. $NA | accenture.com/us-en/about/going-beyond-extended-reality Multinational professional services company Accenture has created…

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga The droids you have been looking for. $69.95, www.starwars.com, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC After 17 years perfecting its formula, developer Traveller’s Tales has returned to the game that started it all and decided to redo LEGO Star Wars. But ‘redo’ doesn’t do justice to the ambition here. This is a completely new game, recreating not only the original trilogy of films in LEGO form, but all nine films from the yellow text of A New Hope, through the “I am the senate” posturing of the prequel trilogy to the final shot from The Rise of Skywalker (complete with a brilliantly cutting sight gag). It’s all here. Not just the action sequences you know and love, but the towns, forests, and swamps around them, all…

$2,999, rog.asus.com The Asus ROG Flow X13 takes on a rather unusual look if you’re more accustomed to the usually chunky chassis and large displays seen on other Asus ROG gaming laptops. This 13-inch ultraportable 2-in-1-style gaming laptop actually offers a few interesting benefits though, namely that you can purchase an additional eGPU (short of external graphics card) to bump up the graphical performance of the device. The black design is modern and simple, though it still retains a lot of that iconic ROG styling we’ve come to love from Asus A few slim gaming laptops have appeared in recent years, with the likes of the Razer Blade 14 offering power and versatility, all in a compact design that won’t hurt your back to haul around, and eGPUs are hardly…

$1,999, www.netgear.com Originally designed to solve the challenges of WiFi inside office buildings, Mesh has become distributed into more mainstream products, like the new Netgear Orbi hardware covered in this review. The Orbi line has from the outset projected this curved persona that makes the components look like vases rather than electronics. Sadly, you can’t put flowers in these, and for the best performance, they need to be in full view. The Orbi line has from the outset projected this curved persona that makes the components look like vases rather than electronics. Sadly, you can’t put flowers in these. Weighing a hefty 1,247g and measuring 246 x 196 x 86mm, we’d be concerned if this was mounted on a wall and fell on us. However, unlike the business-oriented Orbi lines,…

$1,599, www.bowerswilkins.com The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3 is a big, fairly expensive Dolby Atmos soundbar that the company has designed to beat the Sonos Arc on at its own game. To help Bowers & Wilkins achieve its aims, the new soundbar has a lot of speaker drivers, a lot of power, and a lot of control options. The scale, dynamism and enveloping nature of the Bowers & Wilkins’ performance is hard to overstate As far as straightforwardly descriptive words go, ‘soundbar’ is right up there. So it will come as no great surprise to learn Panorama 3 looks exactly as a soundbar is supposed to: long and low and full of speaker drivers. At 65 x 1210 x 140mm (h x w x d), the Panorama 3 is quite…

Free/$54.99, www.reviversoft.com ReviverSoft, an American software company, created PC Reviver. ReviverSoft is a subsidiary of Corel, a Canadian software giant that bought the firm in 2014. The Corel-owned firm develops a broad range of PC optimisation and security software programs with the “Reviver” brand plastered on most. ReviverSoft released the first version of PC Reviver in 2013. Since then, it has dropped several updated versions, including the latest release in 2021. PC Reviver is available on a freemium basis. That is, there’s a free version and premium version alike. The free version has fewer features than the premium one, so you’ll need to pay for the latter to make the most of the software. The premium version of PC Reviver costs $55 for a yearly subscription for one PC. You…

Hard drives are fragile, mechanical devices, which are spinning up and slowing down the whole time you’re using your computer. The heads that read and write your data can neither be too close, nor too far from the disk surface as they reposition themselves. Should you jog or jolt your computer when the drive is in motion, it will try to secure the heads so they don’t crash into the disk surface and scratch your data out of existence. When damage does occur, or sectors wear out, your drive can usually work around the problem by copying any data that’s in danger to a safer part of the disk. However, it can only do this so many times. As more and more of a disk is marked as unusable, its…

GARAGEBAND From apple.com Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS GarageBand is an extraordinary app for making all kinds of music and other audio. And for many musicians and podcasters it’s all the software you could ever need. It’s essentially a friendlier, simpler version of the mighty Logic Pro X, and its selection of auto-playing instruments means you don’t have to know how to play in order to make something magical. It also includes some superb artist lessons to help inspire you. SPOTIFY From spotify.com Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS If you don’t already have a streaming music subscription, then Spotify offers a very good experience without too many adverts. You don’t get Spotify Connect, Spotify Radio, or the highest quality audio on the free tier so this isn’t one…

KHAN ACADEMY From khanacademy.org Available on iOS, iPadOS The Khan Academy is a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing free, world-class education to anybody anywhere, and its app is packed with knowledge. The information here is universal, and it’s particularly strong on maths and science topics. PBS KIDS VIDEO From pbskids.org Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS This is a brilliant app for parents of young children: it provides safe, ad-free access to your kids’ favorite PBS Kids shows, which combine education and entertainment. You can download video for offline playback too, which is great for road trips. DUOLINGO From duolingo.com Available on iOS, iPadOS, iMessage Duolingo can help you to learn new languages or brush up on the ones you already know. It’s a friendly and charming way to broaden…

POLARR PHOTO EDITOR From polarr.com Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS, online Polarr is more of a filter app than an editor, enabling you to adjust various properties – color, light, lens, curves, and so on – and to apply interesting and eye-popping color filters. There’s a paid-for version with more tools and better layer handling, but the core set in the free version is impressive and the interface is easy to use. If you’re looking to do more than Photos can do, it’s worth downloading. iMOVIE From apple.com Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS Ever since it debuted on the iMac DV in 1999, iMovie has been one of the best video apps on the Mac – and more recently, on iPhone and iPad. It may lack the power features of…

GHOSTERY Ghostery blocks ads, trackers, and other content that advertisers and others may use to try and track your online activity, and it does so without any noticeable effect on Safari’s performance. We’ve found that without the trackers, many websites load faster and perform better. ADBLOCK PLUS We don’t want to deprive websites of money but neither do we want to be blasted with ads, autoplay videos, and pop-ups – especially when we’re on mobile data. AdBlock Plus enables you to block the worst offenders without blocking everything. SIMPLEURL Internet addresses seem to be getting longer and longer, which is a real pain when you want to post them to social media or share in Messages. This little extension converts even the lengthiest of URLs into something much shorter, and…

WHAT YOU NEED Rufus 3.18 Beta, Windows 11 disk image (ISO file) TIME REQUIRED These included Secure Boot capability and a TPM 2.0 chip. Secure Boot has been around since 2013, but TPM 2.0 appeared in November 2019, which means some recent machines have been unable to install the new operating system. Thankfully, there’s now a simple solution: to copy a specific version of the Windows 11 installation software to a USB stick from which you can boot your PC. We’ll show you how to do that here. Before doing anything, make sure you have a full backup of your data and other important files. 1 First, download the free Windows 11 disk image – an ISO file that contains all the data Microsoft would have included on a DVD…

REQUIRES Apple Music YOU WILL LEARN How to spot and delete duplicate tracks in Apple Music IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes In this, we’ll show you how to identify and delete duplicate tracks, as well as organise playlists in folders. It’s been 20 years since Apple launched the iPod. At the time, the only way to get music onto the device was to rip your own CDs or download tracks from one of the fledgling download services and add them to iTunes manually. Over the years, iTunes evolved, opening its own download store in 2003 and allowing you to upload your own tracks to iCloud in 2013. Then came Apple Music streaming, and finally, the replacement of iTunes with the Apple Music app on the Mac. If, like us, you’ve…

Zotero bills itself as your personal research assistant. It’s a free tool for not just collecting notes from a variety of sources, but also organising them, sharing them and even using them as citations and bibliographies within your documents. Zotero exists as two primary components: a desktop client and a browser extension, known as a web connector. This component enables you to capture all or part of a web page and add it to your collection. More on how that works shortly. By the time you read this, installing Zotero may be a simple affair using the Zotero-deb wrapper (see https://github.com/ retorquere/zotero-deb) for details, but at time of writing the author was in the process of transferring the package hosting to the Zotero organisation. In the meantime, head over to www.zotero.org/…

REQUIRES iPhone 11 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to capture lowlight shots using the Camera app IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes As daylight savings end we have less daylight hours to shoot in. And, when it’s cold outside we’re more likely to take shots indoors. In low-light conditions, traditional DSLR photographers can manually set a faster ISO speed to make their camera more sensitive to available light. However, this can add ugly specks of digital noise to a shot. Alternatively, a wider aperture will let in more light, but then that can make it harder to get the subject in sharp focus. DSLR photographers can also set a slower shutter speed but this long exposure may lead to a blurry subject (unless shooting on a tripod). And while a…

Trocker Chromium www.snipca.com/41171 Firefox www.snipca.com/41172 Many companies embed trackers in the emails they send you, so they can not only tell that you’ve opened their messages, but also when and where you did so. Trocker – which is short for ‘tracker blocker’ – puts a stop to this privacy invasion by preventing the invisible tracking pixels in emails from loading, while still allowing normal images and graphics to display. This stops the sender knowing that you’ve read their message and targeting you with follow-ups. Trocker also removes the tracking code from links in emails, so you can visit the relevant web pages without revealing that you’ve clicked them. The extension works in Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo Mail and is only activated when it detects trackers, so it’s not constantly running…

A s with any internet-connected device, using a smart TV or streaming stick is a two-way street. You get the content you want – such as TV, films, and music – and in return it collects data about your activities and interests. One reason why TVs have become so cheap in the last few years is that data-gathering and advertising opportunities now give manufacturers an additional revenue stream beyond the sale of the physical hardware. Here we explain how you can enjoy the benefits of your smart telly or streaming stick without your personal data being collected, shared and used to target you with ads. Turn off automatic content recognition Many manufacturers of smart TVs and streaming devices use automatic content recognition (ACR) to analyse your viewing habits. This privacy-invading…

One of the limitations of photography is that it freezes a moment. While that is great in some instances, there are times when you may want to capture the movement within the scene. This can help tell the story you are trying to convey better. For example, take a street scene in a busy city. Clean shots without any distractions can look great, but so can photos that capture the movement of the people and vehicles to show the hustle and bustle of a busy city. By deliberately adding motion blur to your photos by using a slow shutter speed, you can transform them from something that may seem rather static to unique, eye-catching and dynamic-looking photos. The great thing about adding motion blur to your images is that it…

$4,499, www.asus.com We liked the 15.6-inch Zephyrus M15 that we reviewed a couple of years ago, which provided good gaming performance and an attractive slimline design at a competitive price. That model was succeeded by last year’s 16-inch Asus ROG Zephyrus M16, which has now received a rapid update with this new 2022 edition. The Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2022) is a little larger than its predecessor, measuring 19.9mm thick and weighing 2kg, compared to 18.9mm and 1.9kg for the M15. That’s still a good weight for a powerful 16-inch laptop such as this, though, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble carrying it with you when you need to leave home. And when it comes to gaming performance, the Zephyrus M16 leaves its predecessor trailing in its wake. This…

SPACE The ISS will plunge into the sea in 2031 The end of an era is coming. The orbiting laboratory, which launched in 1998, will splash-land 2,700km from land at Point Nemo, the final Pacific Ocean resting place for many dead satellites and space stations, such as Russia’s Mir. The new expiration date for the ISS is due to a Biden administration commitment to extend support for the space station’s operations through 2030, which NASA announced in late December. In January 2022 the space agency announced a new transition plan for low-Earth orbit science. In the lead-up to the decommissioning of the ISS, NASA has signed agreements with three private companies to launch commercial space stations for use by both private companies and government astronauts. These new commercial space stations…

Lost in Blue DETAILED AND IMMERSIVE SURVIVAL SIM. Free with IAP, iOS/Android One of the interesting trends in mobile gaming I’ve noticed are genres that only really work on a mobile device – isometric, top-down survival strategy games with a minor multiplayer component don’t exist on any other platforms. This is mainly since a lot of the gameplay is repetitive – picking up items, killing the same sort of enemies, and doing daily tasks for extra rewards. Lost in Blue is thankfully a lot less repetitive and grindy than other games of its type, as it tends to fit into a larger narrative with less focus on monetisation, which is usually done in games of this type by slowing down travel between areas or making important components horrifically expensive or…

From $929, www.apple.com/au The iPad Air 2022, also known colloquially as the iPad Air 5, has a tough act to follow in the shape of the show-stopping Air 2020. That model brought a striking new design, more power than many expected, and was the perfect showcase for iPadOS. The new Air is basically more of the same, with a higher-power chipset. If that sounds like we’re saying it’s a boring tablet, it’s far from the case – we’ve really enjoyed our time with the new iPad. If that sounds like we’re saying it’s a boring tablet, it’s far from the case – we’ve really enjoyed our time with the new iPad. The 2022 Air arrives at the same price point as its predecessor but ups the power, adds 5G and…

$359, rog.asus.com Asus, via its Republic Of Games (ROG) sub-brand, is one of the biggest names in PC gaming, making everything from power supply units, motherboards, and monitors to mice and keyboards. In recent years, it has started to add gaming headsets to its repertoire, gaining a solid if unspectacular reputation. Its latest gaming headset, the ROG Fusion II 500, is a mid to high-end effort that is wired (generally less hassle, in our opinion, since you don’t have to worry about battery life) and billed as suitable for any platform you fancy hooking it up to, including the current and previous generation of consoles, PC, tablets, and smartphones. The ROG Fusion II 500 nevertheless creates a great first impression: it manages to be both light and durable – a…

$1,699, www.sony.com.au The Sony HT-A7000 comes with a pedigree. It follows the Sony HT-ST5000 as the company’s new de facto flagship soundbar and it carries an air of distinction. What helps elevate the HT-A7000 above its competitors is its integrated upfiring speakers that help it support true Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, with a sprinkling of Sony’s new 360 Reality Audio format thrown in, too. The double woofers on the front of the bar do provide a bit of oomph. At roughly 51-inches long and three inches tall, the HT-A7000 is a pretty big ‘bar. It’s just the right size to fit underneath a Sony X95J TV or one of Sony’s new OLED TVs, but it could very easily block the IR sensor on TVs from other manufacturers or collide with…

1 PlatterAn aluminium or glass disc – the hard-drive equivalent of a vinyl record – that contains all your data. 2 SpindleThis runs the platter and determines how fast it spins (measured in revolutions per minute, or rpm). 3 HeadLike the needle on a vinyl record, this reads the data from the platter. When it’s knocked off balance, your drive stops working. 4 Arm This holds the head in place, and moves it around the platter when seeking data. 5 Actuator Axis This holds the arm in place. 6 Ports The side of the hard drive has ports for power and to connect the drive to the motherboard. 7 Actuator Moves the arm to different positions to read from the disk.…

YAHOO WEATHER From mobile.yahoo.com Available on iOS, iPadOS Apple’s own weather app had a huge update on iPhone recently; on iPad the weather widget takes you to weather.com. Yahoo’s weather app remains one of our favorites with hourly and long-range forecasts, all kinds of info and some nice location-aware photos too. AN OTTER RSS READER From anotterrss.com Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS Promising to be “the most okayest and minimalist RSS reader on iOS and macOS”, this is a simpler, more visually appealing alternative to the likes of NetNewsWire for RSS feeds. You don’t get the power-user features of rival readers, but An Otter does the basics brilliantly. NETNEWSWIRE From netnewswire.com Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS NetNewsWire does for reading what Overcast does for podcasts. It enables you to subscribe…

PAGES, NUMBERS AND KEYNOTE From apple.com Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS Chances are the best office apps for you are already on your device. The recently updated Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps are Microsoft Office compatible (including change tracking and comments in Word documents) but do their thing with a distinctly Apple sensibility. Pages doubles as a pretty great desktop publishing program, the mobile versions are fantastic and fast, and the apps all integrate brilliantly with your Photos library too. SPARK From sparkmailapp.com Available on Mac, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS Spark is like the standard Mail app with superpowers. It offers a smart inbox and smart search, email snoozing and mail templates, shared composition, email scheduling, follow-up reminders, and excellent notifications. The free version has up to 5GB of shared file…

CYBERDUCK From cyberduck.io Available on Mac Cyberduck began as an FTP app but it’s more than that; it’s a cloud browser with support not just for FTP and SFTP but WebDAV, Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift, Backblaze B2, Microsoft Azure and OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive. It’s great for remote file management. BBEDIT From barebones.com Available on Mac Although BBEdit is a paid product, its free mode isn’t just a demo; it’s effectively TextWrangler, a code and text editor with multiple undo, multiple clipboards and tons of customisation. Its multi-file search-and-replace features are very good and it’s fast. TRANSPORTER From apple.com Available on Mac Apple’s Transporter used to be a command-line tool for uploading content to Apple, and now it’s an app. It’s a drag-and-drop app that will upload and validate…

QUICK TIPS Your questions answered WINDOWS Organise your files using Dropbox’s automated folders WINDOWS Beat Windows 11s restrictions by booting from a USB stick WINDOWS Make Windows better WINDOWS Make Office better MAC Get rid of duplicate tracks MAC Trace ancenstor movements LINUX Store and search your research notes iOS Shoot images in low light THE WEB Tips and advice for better web surfing SECURITY & PRIVACY What’s the fuss about splinternet? HOME NETWORKING Tweak your router or modem’s QoS settings A/V Stop your TV spying on you STREAMING Disney+ : There’s something for everyone. PHOTOGRAPHY MASTERCLASS How to add motion blur to your photos DIGITAL DARKROOM Harness the power of colour LUTs What happens to Microsoft accounts when you die? My Microsoft 365 Family subscription allows me to install…

WINDOWS 11 Enter Unicode characters in Notepad using Alt-X The new-look Notepad in Windows 11 lets you enter Unicode characters by pressing Alt-X on your keyboard, just as you’ve been able to in Microsoft Office for years. As an example, type 0024 into Notepad, then press Alt-X and a dollar sign will appear (see screenshot below). Wikipedia has a list of Unicode characters at www.snipca. com/41152. The screenshot also shows one of the main aspects of the redesigned Notepad: rounded corners. These were added so the tool fits more neatly with the style of Windows 11. WINDOWS 10 & 11 Remove options from Settings There are a couple of reasons why you would want to hide some options within Windows Settings. If you share your computer with others, you may…

REQUIRES MacFamilyTree, macOS 10.13 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to record places accurately in MacFamilyTree IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes Geography plays a key role in family history. Were your ancestors globetrotters or did they spend their entire life within the confines of a single town? The more accurate your place data, the better able you are to trace your forebears’ journey and take advantage of MacFamilyTree’s mapping tools. The way places are recorded in MacFamilyTree is influenced by the GEDCOM genealogical standard. While GEDCOM doesn’t allow you to set up specific buildings such as a home or church as a “Place”, you can get around this within MacFamilyTree to ensure your mapping tools are as accurate as possible. When you have a street address, we recommend recording the…

As with all good open-source communities, Zotero is well-supported, especially when it comes to expanding its capabilities with plugins. Visit www.zotero.org/support/plugins for an exhaustive list, then click the link of one to visit its homepage and download the .xpi file to your Downloads folder. Next, open Zotero and click Tools > Add-ons. Click Settings and choose ‘Install Add-on From File…’ Select your .xpi file and then restart when prompted. Instructions for using the add-on should be found on the plugin’s download page. Plugins worth exploring include Zotero Folder Import for importing a group of files from a single folder while replicating that structure within Zotero under collections. There’s also a Zotero OCR plugin for performing automatic text recognition on PDFs you’ve scanned in. You may also want to consider ZoteroPreview…

Chrome Stop Chrome 100 breaking the web Chrome has just released its 100th version and is celebrating its centenary by breaking thousands of websites. That’s the worry, at least, because some sites may be unable to recognise the browser’s first three-digit version number, which will stop them loading pages correctly. The problem is caused by a piece of code called the ‘User Agent string’, which tells websites which browser version you’re using, for example ‘Chrome/99.0.4844.51’. Some websites, especially older ones, only read the first two digits after the browser name, so they’ll detect ‘Chrome/100.0.4896.20’ as version 10 and try – and fail – to display content accordingly. It’s similar to the infamous Millennium (Y2K) bug, which confused software that only recognised the last two digits of years. Google has given…

What is it? A term used to describe the global internet splintering and dividing into regions, so people in one country wouldn’t be able to access sites or services hosted in another. Like China’s Great Firewall? It goes much further than that. China’s Great Firewall restricts what its citizens can access (banning, for example, information on the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989). That’s censorship on a vast scale, but the splinternet would see countries building their own internet, severing connections with the outside world. Analysts have long feared that it could happen, typically citing technological, political, or religious reasons. Now they think the Russian invasion of Ukraine could speed it up. Why? Because part of Russia’s war strategy might be to activate its own internet. In 2019 it claimed to…

Although smart TVs let you browse the web on a big screen from the comfort of your sofa, their built-in browsers – and those you install from their app stores such as Amazon Silk for Fire TV (see screenshot) – leave you vulnerable to hackers and snoopers. TVs lack the antivirus and anti-tracking safeguards offered by computers and mobile devices, so their browsers shouldn’t be used for any online activity that involves entering personal information. “Cyber-attackers can eavesdrop on the browser’s traffic and compromise the cookies that manage authentication to online services, such as social- media accounts or online banking, and impersonate people,” Dr Francisco Navarro, a senior lecturer at De Montfort University’s Cyber Security Centre, told the Guardianearlier this year (www. snipca.com/41114). In contrast, using your phone as a…

80s Mac Esc + Tab Retro Keycaps Make the Escape key exciting again with a backlit Mac Classic keycap. $30 | etsy.com/listing/1040886318/mechanical-keyboard80s-mac-macintosh If you like to occasionally don the black turtleneck or you’re partial to dropping the line “We’re here to put a dent in the universe” when with ‘friends’, then we’ve got the perfect mechanical keycap for you. The 80s Mac Esc + Tab Retro Keycaps are a semi-custom Etsy product that’ll turn the Escape and Tab keys of your Mechanical Mac Studio keyboard into a classic Apple beige box. The dual key combo comes with one Macintosh Classic shaped Escape key with a transparent backlit screen and a keyboard-and-mouse shaped Tab key. It’s even got a selection of transparent screen stickers with classic (and probably copyrighted) Mac iconography.…