Adventure Ausrama Blog

There is so much pressure on children to learn coding. Governments keep pumping money into new schemes. However, this could all be a waste of money. Remember when governments invested all that money into providing PCs to schools. Then the laptop came along and they had to change to making the new tech available. After this came tablets followed by large mobile phones. Chasing new technological developments is a fool's game. Most parents don't want government money. They want to choose what their children "need" at at school. Years ago the Mac was pushed as the "must have" to do drawing work. It was encouraged for what is now called Graphics in school. It used to be called technical drawing or drafting. Schools adopted Autocad for Windows and Macs were redundant. Furthermore, PCs were the machine of choice in most schools for class work and at university . There are many kinds of computer languages. Specializing in one leaves you in a co...

A survey on Australians has brought to light some very interesting results. While we are addicted to mobile phones the PC is not dead. Given a clear choice of having either a smart phone or PC, 61 per cent said they would prefer a mobile phone. This leaves a significant 39 per cent still choosing their PCs. The market for PCs is stable. With PCs lasting a long time and manufacturers selling new systems with old chip versions there is still profit in the long term. Obviously, people would like to have their smart phones and computers. Significantly, 70 per cent of respondents said they would still choose their cars over smart phones. Car addiction is still paramount. In a choice between phones, desktops and tablets, 50 per cent said they preferred their smart phones while 34 per cent chose their computers. Tablets got 16 per cent. Australians do take their mobile phones everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Going to bed with a mobile is common as is taking it to the l...

IBM is leaving the hardware computer market. Maturity in the market has meant demand for PCs has levelled off. Businesses still need them, but the ordinary consumer already has an old version gathering dust. When a person needs to search the Internet he/she uses his, now large, mobile phone or tablet. It should be noted that the tablet market has tapered off as well. Just about anyone who wants one already has it. Cheap clones on sale in supermarkets has reduced profit margins significantly. Even the giant mobile phone maker Samsung has announced that it has had a bad year. Apple is losing out to Android and its days of premium pricing are coming to an end. Unless it comes out with useful new ideas its sales will fall. It definitely needs to look into the crystal ball. Unfortunately, a crystal ball cannot be found. Giants of recent decades have been bought out by rivals and shut down. Making what was in demand in the past is a losers game. Let's face it -...

You have to be careful buying new tech products. There is a belief out there that a new version is always better than the old one. This is not always the case. Take for instance the new Nexus 7. A lot has been written about this with some rave reviews. I don't know what some of these reviewers are on, but they certainly are not seeing things clearly - some bias is there. The widely held view that buying the latest Nexus 7 is the road to Nirvana is wrong. If you have another Android device with the same login you will not get an automatic restore. It just does not work because Google picks up the two Android devices. A trip into the Play Store will be necessary. Click on the icon in the top left and "My Apps" will be shown. You have to click "All" to see the apps you have paid for. Re-installing each one in turn is the requirement and don't think all your data is automatically backed up. You discover that you should have backed up the data...

Australians are buying cheap tablets at a record rate. Just about every major store is selling a low-cost tablet. People are not worrying about completely new brands and are snapping them up. The computers do the basics. 'This is all users seem to want. A spare lying around the house is always useful. Established companies like Intel are taking notice. They are about to launch a "cheapy" into the booming market. Sales of all types of tablets doubled last year in Australia. Apple seems to be ignoring the trend keeping its prices high. This could prove very costly in the long run. You just cannot ignore a change in purchasing. The market has changed with people moving away from major brands. They have realized that tablets are much the same. Making tablets is new for Intel. It is moving with the times and rightly so. Intel does not intend to manufacture in the US. It is consulting with Chinese companies. It knows a quality chip in integral for even c...

THE END OF THE ROAD FOR EASY WEB DESIGN Windows 8 means more problems for web page designers. What Internet Explorer reproduces in Windows 8 on a personal computer is not what comes out on a tablet. Internet Explorer 10 is the worst culprit. Having IE10 built into Windows 8 with no possibility of going back to IE9 is definitely a nuisance. Text goes right off the background square. On a PC, fonts are either extended too long and go over the background square at the bottom, or there is a line gap under the full stop because text is too short. Nearly all the other browsers reproduce correctly, except FireFox with the last word on some fonts extending to the next line. This is rare though. Obviously, the problem lies in the operating system itself which is designed specifically for tablets. Personal computers are only of secondary consideration. There is a "war" going on in the US at the moment over how images will be shown on tablets and even mobile phones. The powers ...

Australians are so obsessed about staying out of the sun to prevent skin cancer that the number of people getting osteoporosis is increasing. This is a sad consequence of a positive behavior change. Osteoporosis would not be a problem if more people took calcium tablets with vitamin D each day. Unfortunately, many would rather spend their money on other things. The disease affects young people as well as the elderly. The Nepean Consensus Statement meeting has been praised for making the disease more widely known. However, money spent on such activities is wasted, considering you can treat yourself without actually being diagnosed with the disease. Developing "fancy" management practises is unnecessary. Giving calcium and vitamin D to the elderly who already suffer with osteoporosis is a waste of time, because once you have the disease it cannot be cured. A person need not adopt a calcium rich diet: calcium and vitamin D in tablet form are easily absorbed by the body. Eve...

A hormone has been identified that makes a person feel full. This "anti-eating" hormone can be taken orally. It easily gets into the bloodstream. The discovery has been made by a combined team from Murdock University Australia, and Syracuse University in the US. Obese people have less PYY hormone. The treatment is so effective that even naturally thin subjects lost weight. Normally, PYY is absorbed in the stomach. Researches have found a way of attaching the hormone to vitamin B12 that carries PYY through the stomach into the bloodstream. Some is lost but a significant amount gets through. The medication will be made available in tablet form and chewing gum. Patients will have to stay on the treatment for a target period: the PYY dose takes up to four hours to get into the system and begin to have an effect. This would mean that patients will have to take a tablet directly after a meal, lunch for example, for it to suppress appetite at tea or dinner. http://www.advent...