Maybe you’ve been vacationing in a very remote place over the weekend. If so, the technology and celebrity world came together under some of the worst possible circumstances.
Over the weekend, revealing pictures of A-List celebrities like movie star Jennifer Lawrence were released into the Internet by a computer hacker. It’s reported these celebrities’ iCloud accounts were hacked into and their intimate pictures are stolen. The iCloud is supposed to help Apple product users move data between their devices. Ms. Lawrence reported the cyber attack to authorities as soon as she got wind of it. Now the FBI is involved, only claiming they know about the incident and are seeking the hackers behind this incident.
We’re only within a week Apple’s big announcement. Now, that announcement could be in jeopardy. They may have to turn their excitement about a new iPhone or iWatch into cleaning up this iCloud hacking mess. Looks like Tim Cook and company are going to have to keep the champagne on ice a little while longer. And see what happens when you let a cloud keep floating without proper security protection? Jennifer Lawrence herself tweeted a complaint about it’s complications months before this happened. What lesson can Apple learn from this to keep not only celebrities, but the general public at large safe?
And don’t even get me started on the perverts…ahem…hackers who perpetrated this crime. And that’s exactly what this is, a crime. What these hackers are doing aren’t cool, sexy or revolutionary. It’s just plain wrong and sick. Some will say, “You shouldn’t be putting that online.” Let’s not blame the victims here. The hackers shouldn’t be violating people’s privacy. So if anyone whose reading this getting some sinister ideas, think twice. One guy who thought it was fun to hack people’s accounts and put their risque photos online is now serving ten years in prison. So what can we do to keep ourselves safe?
You heard it right ” Get a free year of LastPass Premium!”
If you are like me you have a ton of user names and passwords, on a lot of different sites. Using the same user name and password over and over is not only stupid, but it is dangerous and impossible. Every site has different naming rules for your passwords, must have 1 capital letter, needs a symbol, can’t have a symbol, needs a number and a capital letter, this list goes on for ages. Who can remember which variation of your user names and passwords that you used for 50 different web sites? LastPass can.
I was like most people, I knew my main password and the variations to an extent, and honestly relied on my browser to remember my password on a lot of things. But then disaster struck, I needed computer repair at my office in Boston. It was a bad hard drive and although data recovery was successful, my browser settings were reset and all my stored passwords were GONE.
I spoke to my boss about this and he immediately chimed in with “why aren’t you using LastPass?” To which I asked what it was, and he told me that LastPass stores all your passwords in 1 spot. All I would need to remember from now on was my LastPass password and I would never need to learn another password again. I was excited, but skeptical at the same time. What if someone hacked my LastPass account? Then they would have a smorgasbord of information from my student loans, to my credit cards even my bank account.
So I did my homework. ?LastPass has NEVER been hacked, NEVER. They are a security focused app, dedicated to securing passwords.?Furthermore, like any other service,?you should be using two-factor authentication with LastPass. If you do, someone with your master password still will not be able to access your account, even in the event of a breach. If you want to take it to the next level, you can?put together this awesome thumb drive-based system?and?enable these features?for extra two-factor security. LastPass is available for your desktop, and all smartphones and tablets! LastPass is also great for any types of businesses, like Law Firms or Dental Offices where you have a lot of different places you need to log in to.?
Shouldn’t social media be the perfect place to debate social, political and spiritual issues? Since it’s a social no-no to talk about sex, religion and politics at the dinner table,? surely you can vent it all on the Internet, right? Maybe not.
According to studies done by Pew Charitable Research and Rutgers University, sites like Facebook, Twitter, My Space, and You Tube actually hinders debate. In fact, these studies suggests social media websites silences public opinion all together, especially if it goes against the crowd. What’s happening is that in social media, just like in the real world, we surround ourselves and friend ourselves with people just like us. And we want to remain in good standing with our friends and followers, so we don’t dare post anything that could be looked at as different, challenging, or controversial. But they’re more complex issues behind this kind of online conformity. Twitter just said it will allow anyone to read your tweets, whether they’re followers or not. Facebook says it will hide certain stories. It’s well known employers, landlords, and other authority figures can and often do check peoples’ social media sites. Then there is the social epidemic of cyber bulling.? Nobody wants to be the victim of that. Not too many people want to be seen as the cyber bully either.
Social media conformity, to me, is disturbing and sad. This almost reads like jr. high or high school all over again. How many people fought and died for the right to speak our mind, no matter how unpopular it is, so long as we don’t put anyone in harm’s way. If you’re uncomfortable with what he/she said, just un-friend or dis-follow them. Crackdowns on certain social media sited aren’t helping. I have been long against employers checking social media pages as some litmus test if someone gets hired or fired. And as far as cyber bulling as concerned, please, let’s be disagreeable, but respectable about it. I know it’s cool to many to people to see how many likes they can get, but isn’t that falling into a popularity contest? Shouldn’t we make social media a place where all ideas are heard and respected, not just those that are conforming, cool and popular?
You hear it out there in the wind every time a new iPhone is coming out, “it’s gonna have a bigger screen!” In the end, Apple makes the screen .01 inches bigger and tells you that it is because the measurements are ideal to fit in your hand. The iPhone6 comes with the same rumors, BIGGER SCREEN. But we have an image of claimed Foxconn schematics of the iPhone6 with a 4.7 inch screen. This makes it far more comparable to the HTC One M8?and the Galaxy S5. The picture below shows the comparable rumored size courtesy of another tech blog.
Although it will still be slightly smaller than those two, we here at our Boston office are a mixed bag of iPhone, HTC and Galaxy users, each one claiming superiority. But the one constant has been that the iPhone always had a tiny screen, now the difference is fairly insignificant, that argument will be out the door with the iPhone6. Not only will the iPhone6 apparently have a larger screen, but should end up 1mm thinner than it’s competitors giving it a more dynamic feel.
Now I will warn everyone not to get too excited, as we have been duped before. I know I was excited about the iPhone5 only to find out the major revelation was that they put the headphone jack on the bottom so I can’t use my Beats By Dre headphones without breaking my Otterbox on the bottom or buying an extension (thanks for nothing Apple) We will all have to wait for the rumored September 9th press conference where we are assuming they will unveil the new iPhone6 and all our prayer can be answered, or all our hopes and dreams crushed like we were 5 year olds who were jilted by Santa…..
Today in the grandest city of them all, New York City, HTC showed us all its new Windows Phone, the HTC One M8 For Windows Phone! From Customizing your own home screen, to linking with your Xbox One, this phone looks killer. Now this is not a new phone that you haven’t seen, it actually came out earlier this year running the latest and greatest of Android OS. But for those of us who don’t really like the Android OS, and are more used to our Windows 8.1 PC and XboxOne consloe, the?HTC One M8 For Windows will perfectly sync with everything.
From the great aluminum design, to the use of Microsoft’s live tiles to the Epic Audio, HTC Boomsound, the?HTC One M8 For Windows Phone brings it. Cortana is Microsoft’s answer for Siri, and is faster and smarter, and able to help you with anything from finding a restaurant to scheduling your whole life. Which is great if ?you are a busy person, like a lawyer or restaurant owner who is always on the go, and having a reliable personal assistant in your pocket comes in handy.
My favorite part of the HTC One M8 for Windows Phone is how easily it syncs with my XboxOne which already syncs with my entire home. I no longer have to worry where my kids put the remote, or get up off the couch to turn off the lights or fix my thermostat (I have fully integrated my home with my XboxOne) now my phone will do it all for me. My entire home in the palm of my hand. This is the future we were told about when watching cartoons as kids, and now it’s easier.
Price-point for this phone is set at $99.99 with a 2 year contract and is available through Verizon Wireless only. As always if you would like some help syncing your new HTC One M8 for Windows Phone with your PC at home or at work, Computer Geeks is a full service residential and business IT service that can help you do it all!
?Below are some of the specs for the?HTC One M8 for Windows Phone:
General
Size: 146.36 x 70.6 x 9.35 mm
Weight: 160 grams
Display: 5.0 inch, Full HD 1080p
CPU Speed
Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, 2.3 GHz quad-core CPU
Platform
Windows Phone 8.1.1 with Cortana
HTC BlinkFeed
Memory
2GB of RAM
32 GB of onboard storage
Expansion card slot support for microSD cars up to 128 GB
Sensors
Accelerometer
Proximity sensor
Ambient light sensor
Gyro sensor
Barometer sensor
Connectivity
3.5 mm stereo audio jack
NFC
Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX enabled
Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4 & 5 GHz)
DLNA for wirelessly streaming media from the phone to a compatible TV or computer
Micro-USB 2.0
Microsoft Project My Screen
Miracast
Support consumer infrared remote control
Sound
HTC BoomSound
Dual frontal stereo speakers with built-in amplifiers
Twitter followers are seeing tweets favored by others on their page, and are getting notifications when their followers follow someone else. At first it was just a handful of users that were being subjected to this. Now, more and more followers are. It doesn’t seem to be a hit. One Tweeter user says, “Twitter [is] filling my feed with stuff I didn’t ask for…”.? This isn’t the first experiment that’s upsetting consumers. Other experiments like removing Bing translation and embedding Tweets have only caused confusion and frustration among Twitter users everywhere. You don’t have to take my word for it. Just listen to these dissatisfied customers. One person said, “Why does my twitter timeline randomly show me what people have [favored] and who they follow?” Someone else said, “I I do not wanna see what people [favored] on my timeline…” Now, there’s talk of Twitter building a Facebook style platform. That means content on your page will be randomly selected for you.
Look, I can appreciate Twitter trying to provide better service and I can even appreciate them using trial and error to do so. But isn’t there a better way than this? I don’t have all the answers, but maybe a survey of people who will willingly partake in such tests is a good start. And from the looks of things, these tests aren’t working. My suggestion to Twitter is don’t tick off your fans so much they won’t Tweet anymore. Yes, it can happen. I’ve seen it myself. So let’s stop the testing. And I wonder what will the next uninvited, unwanted Tweet I will get on my Twitter page?
