Tech and Gadgets by Peter Bite
The future is in Redfern
At the Australian Technology Park in Redfern is one of the world’s leading research facilities for information and communications technology called NICTA (National ICT Australia Ltd.). NICTA is a government and university funded facility where new technologies are developed and applied to real world situations.
I visited NICTA to meet with Dr Terry Percival, their Director of the Digital Economy. Dr Percival was part of the team that recently won the European Patent of the Year award for the wireless card. The prize was presented to the team at a glittering ceremony in Copenhagen attended by Prince Frederick and Princess Mary of Denmark.
At NICTA Terry is responsible for the Digital Economy team whose scope covers research into applications for new technology emerging from laboratory settings. The newest development for the team is their digital economy showcase, a special room set up to demonstrate how technology will be used in the near future.
The showcase contains a home of the future containing touch tables and video call technology to your friends and family whether in the home or not. This part of the showcase also features the TV of the future, where multiple channels are played at once, with your favourites and recents at the top of the list to support quick selection.
The showcase also featured the rural medical centre of the future, where consultations and certain treatments were done via video link up to centrally based doctors.
Another display demonstrated a powerful new data analysis engine which has uses for business and government to help shape policy and legislation.
How to unfreeze your computer
I attended to a PC this week that was freezing when playing YouTube videos. This problem was caused by a combination of malware and too many temporary files on the hard drive. Most of these had been generated by various website visits.
The fix for this is a three step process. First run Windows disk repair utility. This lis located in the Accessories folder under System or just type “Disk Repair” in the Start box. Analyze and repair those disks that store your data, especially data from the web.
The second step is to run a disk defragmenter. This can take some time depending on how fragmented the disk is. As a general rule a disk should be defragged once a week.
The third step is to run a malware clean up program. A good one is Spybot S&D from Spyware. This will take approximately 30 minutes per 500 GB to search for malware on your system and destroy what it finds.
Windows updates that fail
From time to time a Microsoft Windows update may fail to load into your system. This problem needs to be addressed as soon as possible after it occurs. Follow the onscreen instructions at first. This may lead to downloading the Windows Updater again and trying the update again. If that fails, the next step is to call Microsoft Tech Support on 132 058. In the PC I was working on with this problem Microsoft ended up installing the latest version of Windows from scratch. This solved the update problem.
Your issues
Each week I will answer readers questions about technology or gadgets and the best questions will be published here for the benefit of all. If you need any help with your technology needs, just email me at peterbitecomputing@gmail.com .
