Category: Technology

Seniors becoming savvy about digital technology

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During a frustrating hour or two updating our websites, I realised I am more savvy than the average 74-year-old when it comes to digital technology. Or so I thought. Later, you will read about how Covid-19 prompted many older Australians to start interacting with Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp and other communications systems. In what has been a busy month (editing the U3A newsletter, updating three websites, updating our self managed super fund and writing a new…

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The future for record stores

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While my friends in New Zealand were still at school, I was making apprentice wages, spending almost all of it on records. Our small town didn’t have a record store as such, but the local department store stocked the latest pop records. At the time, LPs were pressed at a factory in Wellington owned by His Master’s Voice (HMV). My copy of ‘Please Please Me’ (The Beatles), for example, was issued by Parlophone in Mono….

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How we listen to music in 2022

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This week I decided to reflect on the many ways we can listen to music in this digital age. We’ve come a long way since the first recording etched on to a wax cylinder in 1860. In just 50 years, the mainstream way of listening to music has moved from vinyl LPs to cassettes to CDs and now to online streaming. It’s been quite an evolution. This FOMM was inspired by a frustrating search for…

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Cyber attacks and the Faraday cage

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Just as I was thinking about the unexpected email from the Australian Taxation Office, She Who Mocks ScoMo called me in to watch a live press conference about cyber attacks. Beware of State-based actors with sophisticated means to hack Australian infrastructure, began the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison (ScoMo). “He’s dog-whistling,” interjected SWMS. This of course sent me off to google what ‘dog-whistling’ meant. After discounting a video of a wizened old Kiwi farmer in gumboots…

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