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Internet providers could easily snoop on your smart home

August 29, 2017September 1, 2017

IoT devices often identify themselves voluntarily, usually by connecting to specific domains or URLs. Even if they didn’t, there are simple ways of profiling them based on observation and some known data. It’s certainly true that encryption is on the rise online. Data from Mozilla, the company behind the popular Firefox browser, shows that more than half of web pages use HTTPS, the standard way of encrypting web traffic. When sites like The Atlantic use HTTPS, a lock icon appears in users’ web browsers, indicating that the information being sent…

With iPod discontinuation, what are the alternatives?

August 24, 2017September 1, 2017 Staff Writer

Smartphones have largely replaced portable media players for most people. It’s been a few years since Apple bothered to update its iPod touch, and it’s been even longer since any other company try to offer a good Android-powered alternative to Apple’s touchscreen media player. Apple is now abandoning its traditional iPod because most people with smartphones now use them for everything. However, many current smartphones – including Apple’s – don’t have FM, and none has a DAB radio. Worse, smartphones need regular app updates and sometimes annual operating system upgrades. You…

Google secretly recording users through mobile devices

August 23, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

Did you know that Google has been recording you without your knowledge? Some of your most intimate conversations might be sitting in a Google data centre somewhere. Just talking is enough to activate the recordings – but thankfully there’s an easy way of hearing and deleting them. The technology giant has effectively turned millions of its users’ smartphones into listening devices that can capture intimate conversations — even when they aren’t in the room. The company quietly records many of the conversations that people have around its products. The feature…

Globaldata: Artificial Intelligence (AI) more crucial for IoT than Big Data insights

August 23, 2017September 1, 2017

Artificial intelligence won’t solve every problem, but its current applications are already fundamentally reshaping the way we do business and collect data. While the development of the internet of things has revolutionized heavy industry, online shopping, localized data collection and virtually every other aspect of modern life and business, innovators are still struggling over the future of the IoT, and how they’ll get there. While many see big data as the driving engine behind the IoT, savvy investors and entrepreneurs have shown that the real power behind the interconnectivity phenomenon…

Opera shuts down its Opera Max Service

August 16, 2017September 1, 2017 Staff Writer

Opera Max has been the rising star in Opera’s portfolio. The service offered a system-wide data-saving proxy that funnelled all app data through Opera’s servers to compress images and videos. Initially, opening a web page required users to calculate the amount of data that they would spend. Smartphones have been always data hungry and people tried all sorts of ways to save the smallest KiloBytes of data. It is this where Opera’s data saving app came to the rescue. Opera developed some clever algorithms and used in their Opera Max…

Explore the latest threats to your mobile device security

August 16, 2017September 1, 2017

It is common knowledge that mobile devices are integral to both our personal and business lives. With cyberattacks against individuals, businesses, and government entities increasing in frequency and sophistication, it is no surprise that mobile devices are now considered by threat actors to be one of the weakest links in the IT infrastructure of most enterprises. A decade ago, mobile malware was considered a new and unlikely threat. Many mobile device users even considered themselves immune from such threats. Currently, more than 1.5 million new incidents of mobile malware have…

AI is now at the heart of every innovative economy

August 15, 2017August 16, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

How do you solve an enormous problem like stagnant global growth? It would require getting more productivity from people already working flat out. The solution? Well, it comes from something other than people, of course. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to double the GDP growth rates of 12 developed economies by 2035 a study found out. The study, entitled Why Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Growth, also found that AI could significantly boost labour productivity – by up to 40pc in some cases. Between them, the 12 countries…

Microsoft just officially listed AI as one of its top priorities

August 3, 2017 Dianne Jacobs

Microsoft just named artificial intelligence as one of its top priorities in a financial filing. The annual report for the company’s 2017 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, now includes six references to AI, up from zero in the previous annual report. And the company has plunked AI into its corporate vision statement, too. “Our strategic vision is to compete and grow by building best-in-class platforms and productivity services for an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge infused with AI,” the company wrote in the annual report, which was…

Microsoft to include in-built eye tracking support Windows 10

August 2, 2017September 1, 2017

Microsoft is planning to add native eye tracking support into Windows 10. The new support is primarily designed to help those suffering from neuro-muscular diseases like ALS and other disabilities to control the various interface elements in Windows 10 without a traditional mouse and keyboard. This ranges from gazing at apps to launch them, or using an onscreen keyboard to glance at characters and type out words. Dubbed Eye Control in Windows 10, the new feature will require hardware like Tobii’s Eye Tracker 4C. Microsoft has worked closely with Tobii…