Friday, April 8, 2016 at 7:34PM Microsoft is posting on YouTube a video monthly recap of their updates from their blogs. Here is the link.
Thursday, April 7, 2016 at 6:45AM It is amazing how a seemingly simple device can so quickly become a part of your everyday life without you really considering its impact on the many different types of interactions you may have with it. The Amazon Echo has become one of those devices that hardly ever remains unused in the household either by myself or my wife. We use it as an speaker extension to our many handheld devices to entertain us through a davorite podcast while we play words with friends on a lazy weekend afternoon. We'll request from Alexa to play some accoustical music to give us some background music while we discuss and solve the many items that come in our daily lives. I come down in the morning and ask for my daily calendar to begin for the day's events that I must prepare to work on.
With the ability to play online radio stations, I can get information on what is happening on sports talk shows and other news stations in our local area. It has caused me to look for applications that will enhance its capabilities like finding a program to sync my outlook calendar with my google calendar so that I don't have to do double input in both areas.
I love redirecting the playing of my Audible books to the Alexa to give my ears a rest from the earbuds I wear all night long. While the Echo might not have the rich bases that some other wireless/bluetooth speakers might have, it more then sufficient for the spoken word.
I just finished a review of the Amazon Tap that was written up on the Verge and can see many of the points that they brought with the Magic being lost with not being able to grab Alex's attention by addressing it from across the room. Having to physically touch a similar device to get its attention reduces its impact. But this drawback might not be as bad in certain types of use scenarios. I could see where the device is always at arms length, that reaching out to begin your interaction might not be so bad and the fact that it is so portable makes it nice to be able to bring it with you as your location continues change as it does so often during the long summer days.
It has a nice long battery life (9 hours), that makes it a functioning companion for a relatively full day of use. This makes it that much more intriguing to me to actually mke me consider adding it our household of friendly devices.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016 at 1:50PM Many of you that have visited our storefront have met Brett out in our showroom. He is one of our newer members of our staff and like most of us here, is very excited about all sorts of technology. I am looking forward to reading about some of his interests and he has plands on producing some how-to articles and videos.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016 at 6:54AM Once an infection takes hold there are very few options that you have to recover from it.We are seeing that besides the general attacks that occur, now we are seeing specific organizations being targeted.
There have been several Medical Organizations that have fallen prey and of course financial institutions are a prime target as well. The Government is also under attack with a reported 321 separate ransomeware attempts in the second half of last year. Is the Government ready to protect them?
A recent article from GovInfoSecurity has gone into depth about the question: DHS's Response About Infections on Federal Computers Leaves Questions Unanswered.
Even the most sophisticated protection, though it can help prevent these attacks from taking hold of your system, you have to be on constant guard for its footprints. Once it makes itself known to you it is usually too late to recover unless you have a good back up system to recover from. Even so, you may have some loss. While not all versions of Cryptolocker require a full reload, the nastier versions due and lately those are ones we have been seeing. Make sure you have full backups of your data, that they are incremental in nature, and that you are vigilent when working with websites and communications from outside sources. Don't be click happy and meander onto sites that you don't recognize, and make sure that you have a good and up-to-date virus protection software package.
If you are on a network, you need a solid business class firewall that runs software to actively protect you from these kinds of attacks. We like the Sophos line of products for this. For backup of your files we like to use our Gemini 3 Backup Solution. It provides an effective and simple image backup system of your servers that provide incremental recovery. It makes it simple to look for the first attack point to recover from to provide a safe recovery of your system. Talk to our representatives to learn more about these products.
Monday, April 4, 2016 at 5:15PM I enjoy listening to their podcast each week and one of the topics that they talked about is what every manufacturer seems to be talking about which is the Internet of Things (IoT), Apple and the FBI and the Jury Duty Scam that is going around. You can listen to it here: Sophos Security Chet Chat
The US Court Service has warned about the a new scam that is calling people to tell them that they didn't follow through on Federal Jury Duty and are able to send you to a website that looks like it might be real, they are spoofing local phone numbers and it is absolutely not true. The Us Court System says that they don't make these calls and if you ever receive a call like this it is something that you should just ignore/hang up on. These can be scary and they can sound real. But don't be taken in.
Bob Appleby
Here is a great article that goes into more depth on this scam
Sunday, April 3, 2016 at 12:23PM Follow this article from Arstechnica about a new Ransomware attack being found primarily in Germany, but I'm sure we will be seeing instances of it here soon. Take a look at the full article here!
Sunday, April 3, 2016 at 11:56AM Hobbiests be aware of a new product that can be found at TweakTown Deals. And right Now it is on sale! $39 and free shipping, perfect for electronic projects. When I say it is small, I mean tiny. Just one inch square! Just look at these specs:
Note: Needs stable power input; 5.0V USB phone charger recommended. High temperature or static electricity will cause permanent damage. Solder maximum is 260C at 6 seconds.
Includes:
