Apple recalls AC wall plug adapters in Australia

The affected two-prong adapters could, in very rare cases, break and create the risk of an electrical shock if touched, the company said in a blog post.

The company said it was aware of 12 such incidents worldwide.

The affected adapters were shipped with Mac and certain iOS devices between 2003 and 2015 and were also included in the Apple world travel adapter kit.

Apple instructed customers to check the inside slot where the plug prongs attach to an Apple power adaptor.

Adaptors with four or five characters or no characters on the inside slot should not be used

A table showing the types of Apple chargers

Apple said the recall does not affect AC wall plug adapters designed for Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, United Kingdom, United States or Apple USB power adapters.

Telstra overtakes Woolworths as most valuable brand

Telstra and Woolies have swapped spots on the ladder between first and second place to make telstra the most valuable brand.

The telco’s overall brand is valued at US$10.7 billion, which is based on factors such as familiarity, loyalty, promotion, marketing investment and staff satisfaction.

Telstra’s rival Optus also cracked the top eight this year with a brand value of US$3.6 million. The rest of the list was dominated by the big four banks ANZ, CBA, Westpac and NAB taken the third to sixth places, respectively. Coles came in at seventh.

Telstra came in at No. 110 globally, up from No. 145 in 2015

Apple iPad Pro outsold Microsoft Surface Pro in Q4

according to a report by market research firm IDC.

The iPad Pro helped Apple lead the global tablet market, with 24.5 percent share. Despite its reign over the other vendors, Apple’s tablet shipments continued to slide, falling to 16.1 million shipments, 24.8 percent down from the same quarter last year.

While Microsoft’s tablet sales did not help it make the top five market vendors in the overall market, the Surface Pro devices have gained popularity among enterprise customers.

an entry level Surface Pro 4 is $1,349 in Australia, while an entry level iPad Pro model is $1,249

Detachable tablets continued to gain traction in 2015 overall. While pure slate tablets experienced their greatest annual decline of 21.1 percent over the year, detachable tablets more than doubled their shipments since the fourth quarter of last year.

Father found not guilty of theft after confiscating daughter’s iPhone

Ronald Jackson, from north Texas, confiscated his then 12-year-old daughter’s iPhone 4S during a 2013 access visit, upon discovering inappropriate text messages about his new partner,

The girl’s mother Michelle Steppe initially sent Jackson a letter of demand to retrieve the phone. A two-year police and legal pursuit then followed, culminating in Jackson’s arrest in April last year.

Judge Lisa Green instructed the jury to find Jackson not guilty, citing insufficient evidence.

Google denies giving $60,000 to Labor Party

Google has refuted the Australian Electoral Commission’s annual report that showed the tech giant donated $60,000 to the Labor Party last year.

The AEC on Monday morning published its periodic disclosure list of political party donations, which listed Google as making its first-ever political donation in Australia, to the Labor Party.

http://periodicdisclosures.aec.gov.au/Returns/56/UFLW2.pdf

Google adds Aussie twang to voice search

Australians can now substitute “footy” for football, “arvo” for afternoon and find directions to Mullumbimby or Goondiwindi,

The extended vocabulary came after Google, which is now part of holding company Alphabet Inc, added an Australian accented voice to its Google Maps and search applications last week.

“People are starting to talk to their phones much more regularly now. Mobile voice searchers have doubled in the last year,” Google Australia spokesman Shane Treeves said.

Shayne – 4/2/16 – Returns from the dead…

Youtube Said To Be Working To Stream Live 360 Video

You Tube is building capabilities that will allow it to stream wonderful, immersive and, in some cases, almost exhilarating 360-degree video live.
According to BuzzFeed, YouTube has been meeting with 360-degree camera manufacturers about adding support for immersive live-streamed video broadcasts to its platform.
While there are many 360 video cameras, only a small number of them can stream video live — and even then the footage isn’t amazing.
The way the video arrives to YouTube could prove a headache too: different hardware systems stitch together their multiple video feeds together in a variety of ways, which may make displaying them properly difficult.
then there’s the problem of streaming the resulting video files. Such 360 videos tend to be large, because they’re made up of multiple feeds.
Facebook’s been working out how to compress them to make them easier to push down the pipes, but it’s a technique that right now works very much offline.
According to BuzzFeed there’s no word on when such a feature might arrive on YouTube

TV recording comes to Apple TV

Consumers soon will be able to access a TV guide, set up recordings and later view them all using a Generation 4 Apple TV attached to a display, and a new app being built by DVBLogic.
“I am glad to confirm that we are working on AppleTV 4 DVBLink app as a part of our new DVBLink version 6,” a company spokesman said.
“This new version is scheduled to be available in April 2016 and, among other new things, will feature lean-back apps for Android TV and AppleTV platforms,” the spokesman said.
“These apps will offer full DVBLink functionality, including a TV guide, recording management, live TV and recorded viewing.”
Apple’s action to build an app store for its TV is letting developers build diverse applications such as a software-based personal video recorder.
consumers will have to attach a storage device such as an external hard drive or use a NAS box to store TV recordings. And they will need a device on their network that houses a TV tuner. So DVBLogic effectively is providing the front end of a PVR (personal video recorder) setup for Apple TV.
Apps such as Plex let you use Apple TV to watch TV recorded on another device, but it doesn’t come with a program guide. You can’t initiate the recordings from the screen.
Alternatives are to use Apple AirPlay to stream from another device to Apple TV, or, if you’re willing to take a risk as some had, install a PVR front-end on an older, jailbroken Apple TV.
It’s possible already in the US at least to initiate and watch live TV on an Apple TV using an HDHomeRun tuner box and an Apple TV app called Channels.
DVBLogic, a Netherlands company, specialises in live and recorded TV solutions and its DVBLink software handles 4 types of TV sources. They are free-to-air TV received by an antenna, cable TV, satellite and TV streamed across the internet (IPTV).
DVBLogic software already runs on Windows, Mac and Linux computer systems, the tiny Raspberry Pi, and network attached storage (NAS) solutions by Synology, QNAP, Asustor, Western Digital and Netgear.
DVBLink will stream TV output to phones, tablets and displays connected to a home network and, when configured, to a user from across the internet.
Streaming & “catch up” negate the need for recording live tV, apart from sport.

Google parent Alphabet overtakes Apple as world’s most valuable company

Alphabet, Google’s new parent company, topped Apple as the world’s most valuable business in after-hours trading after reporting surging earnings.
Alphabet earned $US4.9 billion in net income on revenue of $US21.3 billion in the fourth quarter.
That figure easily topped the average estimate of $US8.10 per share among analysts surveyed by FactSet.
The earnings report provided the most detailed breakdown yet on the profits pouring in from Google’s dominant search engine and ad network. (Google reorganised itself under Alphabet last October.)
Investors pushed up Alphabet stock $US44.23, or more than 5 per cent, to $US815 in extended trading.
Based on that after-hours bump, Alphabet surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. According to calculations from S&P Indices, Alphabet was worth $US571 billion versus $US538 billion for Apple. That ranking, of course, could shift again in regular trading tonight (AEDT).
Apple’s stock has been sliding amid concerns about a slowdown in iPhone sales. Alphabet’s stock has surged by 45 per cent since the end of 2014 when it was still trading under Google’s name.
Alphabet’s other companies together produced an operating loss of $US1.2 billion on revenue of just $US151 million. Alphabet labels that category “other bets.”

Stop using Microsoft Edge’s InPrivate mode if you value your privacy

It is possible to peek behind the curtain and see which sites have been visited when using a browsing mode that should mask this with Edge.
There are similar features found in other browser, Chrome has Incognito mode & Safari has Private Browsing mode.
Somewhat counterintuitively, Edge actually records browsing history in InPrivate mode. More than this, by examining the WebCache file it is a relatively simple task for someone to reconstruct full browsing history, regardless of whether surfing was performed in regular or InPrivate mode. These were the finding of infosec expert Brent Muir.
The Container_n table stores web history. There a field named ‘Flag’ will be available. A website visited in the private mode will have a flag value as ‘8’. Generally the purpose of storing this information is to retrieve crashed private sessions.
\Users\user_name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WebCache
any skilled investigator can easily spot the difference and get concrete evidence against a person’s wrongdoings.
Microsoft is aware of the problem, and says:
We recently became aware of a report that claims InPrivate tabs are not working as designed, and we are committed to resolving this as quickly as possible. – Sounds like they are working as designed, but the design was WRONG.

Episode 473 – Aussie Tech Heads Shownotes