STACK #191 Sep 2020

LIFE TECH NEWS

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EVERY STEP YOU TAKE… G oogle Maps has been around for 15 years now, and has saved many a lost soul’s bacon (or, should you prefer, facon). It’s now more useful than ever for journey planning, and is also undergoing a makeover. The sprucing up of the service with new colour-mapping technology means more detailed maps, like the before and after that’s pictured. So, if you fancy a trip to Iceland to track down Fire Saga (or even any of their real Eurovision contestants) then you’ll be more able to tell what’s up and what’s down, be you on the ground or pre-planning your trip. Also promised soon is the ability to see more highly detailed street info, showing the accurate shape and width of roads to scale, as well as the locations of footpaths, crosswalks and pedestrian islands. These are coming to London, New York and San Francisco soon, with more cities to be brought online over time. Here’s an interesting stat – Google Maps claim to now have high-definition satellite imagery for over 98 per cent of the world’s population. As they say, that’s equivalent to 18 billion football fields! Now, where did we put that copy of The Police’s greatest hits…?

SMILE FOR THE SONY!

S ony has

released a new

desktop app for Windows 10 users that allows for many of their digital cameras – 35 at the time of writing, with more to come – to be used as a webcam. Entitled Imaging Edge Webcam , the free app is simple to set up – you just connect your

blocky, low resolution in all of those now ever-so- familiar video calls. Beyond its usefulness

for online meetups, the app also opens up the ability to do high-quality live streaming.

camera to your computer via USB, and say goodbye to people seeing you in

SPEED-D WD SSD! H ard drive maestros Western Digital have unleashed a new range of portable drives, the My Passport SSD. As many will already know, SSD stands for ‘Solid State Drive’ – there are no moving parts at all, meaning both vastly increased reliability and super-fast file access. The latter comes here via the inclusion of NVME tech, which is a communications standard developed specially for SSDs that equates to one thing, and that’s blistering speed more akin to that of memory than a hard drive. As well as performing straight out of the box on PC or Mac, the sleek metal design of the USB 3 connected My Passport SSD will come in four different colours. Hey, these things matter! Also, if you’re a bit of a klutz sometimes,

Google Maps: Before

Google Maps: After

these are definitely the drives for you, as they feature drop resistance up to almost two metres. The grey edition in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB flavours will be the first off the blocks at the end of this month, with other colours available later in the year.

New and existing STACK members have the opportunity to win one of 30 $50 JB Hi-Fi digital gift cards every month!* 50 $ MEMBER REWARDS If you’re already receiving STACK 's newsletters, you’re in with a chance to win – if not, join now for free: www.stack.com.au/member/ Thanks to JB Hi-Fi

1 of 30

GIFT CARDS EVERY MONTH *

*Terms and conditions apply. Full terms and conditions at www.stack.com.au/competitions/members-rewards-50/

JULY 2020

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