In Defence Of The Tech [I]

The first in what I fear will be a regular series...

We've read a recent spate of news articles that turn up at least once a year. In their simplest form, they go like this,

'I went on holiday, came home and got a mobile phone bill for £27 million.'

There is a recurring theme in almost all of these stories. And it goes something like,

'I didn't know I was going to be charged £120 per MB while abroad.'

And therein lies the problem. Not that the bill was a mistake. Not that the phone was racking up a phone bill with an evil smile on its face. The issue was that the human in this equation didn't know all the facts.

That's not to say the mobile service providers are completely blameless. Historically, roaming charges were notoriously hard to find. It really wasn't even made clear enough that charges were significantly increased while abroad. There again, how could it not be. Being able to phone or text the same number and have that person or message reach you wherever you are in the world is a phenomenal technological achievement.

So this seems to be down to getting all the facts, then using your phone within your means. Data use is what will rack up the largest portion of your mobile bill while abroad. Some apps will use data to check for updates and that data can mount up quickly. Most phones have the facility to switch off roaming data and if you don't need constant internet access and can live off of WiFi only, switch it off. If you do need mobile data overseas, it's worth asking your provider what offers they can give you or buying a SIM card specifically for the country you're travelling to.

Estuary IT - Defenders of Tech since 2013!

Default Password? No Thank You!

Have you ever been in a location where you need Internet access and you use your mobile phone as a Personal or Portable Hotspot.  Essentially you use your mobile phone's Internet connection as a WIFI for your laptop or other devices.

Upon setting this up initially, you might find that your device will provide you with a password to use. How convenient! However, you might give consideration before making use of that connection.

In a recent test, researchers found that the list of words selected for these default passwords was little under 2000, and with equipment that could try 390,000 guesses per second, were able to crack the password in under a minute.

Have you evaluated your password recently ? How secure is your password ? Social networking is an open book when it comes to your life, is your password made up of names of places or children or maiden names - things that could easily be guessed from the locations of your photos, or list of children you mention in your posts?

Why not see how secure your password methodology is? Follow the link below and try out a few passwords to see just how secure they are:-

http://password.social-kaspersky.com/en

Certainly consider changing any default password that your device thinks up. Why not put THAT password in the web site above and see just how secure it is?

Cryptolocker and the importance of Backups.

Imagine walking into your office, or switching on your home computer to find all your important files, word documents, spreadsheets or music, photographs and videos locked.

Locked so tight, that you'd have to contact the NSA to unlock it for you.

Now imagine seeing on your screen the words "Your data has been locked, pay $300 to have them unlocked. You have 50 hours..."

Seem crazy? Well, this is a new breed of nasty virus spreading around at the moment, and once your data is locked, even removal of the virus wont help. Antivirus software companies are working hard to come up with a good detection for this breed of Trojan virus, but it seems one of the only ways you can get your data back without paying the money is by having a BACKUP.

We've always championed backups, regular ones at that. But now is a prime reason to do so.

Always be careful about what you download, particularly if it contains an attachment. This is one way that the virus spreads, as an attachment to your email and so if you get any emails that contain an attachment treat them with utmost caution. Delete it if you're not sure. If it's legitimate, you'll be able to get the company to send you another copy.

Backing up your data is VITAL for businesses and if you have data that you cherish, it's important that you backup regularly.

The Big Apple

So tonight was interesting as we heard a few things from the big Apple. I don't mean that location in America, but the bigger Apple. The one that makes all those lovely devices.

Apple tonight made more tech history with their announcements from California.  iOS 7 is to be launched on the 18th September and contains a lot of default things built in that most of us had to get apps for.  A cleaner screen, ease of use and the nice thing is that if people have a device with iOS 5 or above they'll be able to do this over WIFI directly from their device.

Interestingly one of the things that caught my attention was the announcement of the iPhone 5C. Multi-coloured and a "cheaper" version of the iPhone 5S.  I am sure that it might be better than it first looks, but in my mind it's devalued the iPhone. I always thought of the iPhone as a classy phone to have. Now... not so much.  How many people will buy the iPhone 5C compared to the more expensive and more "full on" iPhone 5S? Who knows.. time will tell. But was it a good strategy move?

Surely Apple don't make mistakes, they know what they are doing. Right ? 

Oh yes. Google Maps.  "Nuff Said" ;)

However, the A7 64 bit chip in the new iPhone 5S? Now that is interesting. The A7 chip is about 40 times faster than the original iPhone !  Serious bit of processing speed.. They've also added a new M7 chip which will monitor the movement of the phone. This will apparently give rise to more motion and fitness apps and this could be an interesting watch.

Security was addressed, with a fingerprint reader. Not so sure about this and again it'll have to be seen to be believed. To think that my phone will not open and potentially delete everything because it can't read my fingerprint is a concern.. but I guess if I worked for MI-5 I would like that.

Well.. let's wait and see..  I know for a fact that week tomorrow, most of the iPhone planet will have a new iOS to be introduced to, so we'll bring you more information as that becomes relevant.

Obviously! Or Not?

I had a very interesting experience over the weekend that demonstrates the challenge that software developers face in making 'user-friendly' software.

My mother's phone died last week, so I gave her one of my old ones. Aren't I a great son. Now, her old mobile was a super-simple, big-button phone designed for - erm - a more mature generation. The replacement was a 'top of the range in its day' Nokia touch screen. Disaster looms.

One particular sticking point was adding phone numbers to the contact list. I'd added a shortcut to Contacts on the home screen so it was easy to open. However, we then hit a user dead end.

Mum: "How do I add another phone number?"

Me: "You touch the phone book icon with a plus on it."

Mum: "You make it sound obvious. I didn't know that."

 Me: Safe silence.

Mum was right, it was obvious to me. I want to add a phone number, therefore I touch the only button with an add symbol on it.

Mum: "What now?"

Me: "It says 'tap to write' up there. So tap it."

Mum: Tap. Enters contact's full name.

Me: "Whoa whoa whoa. It says 'first name'. 'Last name' is the next field."

Mum: Disgruntled silence.

Let me make something quite clear. My mum is not a stupid woman. She's a history-buff, has high-level music certificates and a younger age than me on brain training. Yet, on some level, this seemed beyond her.

We do programming here at Estuary, so we understand the challenges in making a genuine user-friendly system. You could use text on all the buttons but as soon as you release that software in overseas' markets your translation work significantly increases. Symbols are universal, but they have to be crystal clear.

Also, the psychology for many people is that 'this is technological, therefore is going to be hard,' however simple the interface. It takes a lot of work to make something easy. A lot.

Now, close your browser and get some air. No, close it. It's the red cross in the top corner. Was that not obvious?

Digital or Analogue Calls?

Oh how things have changed since the first telephone in 1876 !

What started as a way to get multiple telegraph messages across the same lines soon developed into speech and nowadays we have millions of conversations travelling the world at great speed.

Years ago, everything relied on a diaphragm to change sounds into a current and at the other end of the line, the current was used at the other end to convert it back into sound.

Nowadays, although the mouthpiece and earpiece are of similar technology, the signal is digitised and chases at light speed down optical circuits. Also is the more recent development of VOIP - Voice Over IP.

What is VOIP ?  This is the technology of sending the audio signal down a digital line through the Internet, racing around the world and converting it back to an audio signal at the other end by a computer or similar device. The benefits?

One of the main benefits is cost. Conversation Audio isn't bandwidth hungry, so it can travel down your Internet connection even if you don't have a very fast connection.  If you are already paying for a broadband connection, you can have endless calls to other VOIP connections for "free" - there is no charge for the length of time you spend on a call, nor is the charge of the call determined by distance, so long as they have Internet.

Other services are available too, SKYPE is a popular VOIP service which offers the facility to allow callers to call Landline numbers which are NOT on the Internet by taking the signal into a local phone exchange over the Internet, and then converting the signal to regular audio for the final distance to the receiving telephone.  The benefit?  Long Distance Calls for the price of a local charge.

There are many benefits to VOIP, and as the service continues to improve and expand, we can see that most or all telephones we be this way.

So the choice remains yours, for now. But VOIP will continue to bite away at the old Analogue phone service.

It's a Raid!

As we become more and more dependant on our computer systems, it becomes more and more apparent the need to keep backups.

While the cost of external back up drives is getting lower and lower, there is a constant risk of "forgetting" to take regular backups of your data which only becomes apparently when your main system crashes, or the drives fail.

Is there anything we can do, which happens quietly as we work ? Yes.

RAID is a system of using multiple drives to give data redundancy. This means that you end up with copies of data occurring as you work and can give almost instant safety.

The level of RAID largely depends on the space you have in your computer tower, and the budget that you have. But even the simplest systems could support the basics RAID settings that would give most users a level of comfort.

We'll discuss just 4 levels of RAID. There are many others, but the 4 should help most home users and some smaller businesses too.

RAID 0 uses a system of STRIPING the data. This means that if you had 2 x 500gb drives you'd have about 1000gb (1TB) of storage space.  The plus side of this is that half of the data is kept on one drive and the other half is kept on the other. This gives you twice the space and double the speed as both parts of the data can be accessed at the same time.  The down side is that if one drive fails, you lose all your data.

RAID 1 uses a system of MIRRORING the data. This is much safer as the data is stored on both drives at the same time. The access time is slower as the computer has to write the data to two drives concurrently, and you don't get any more space than just one drive. But if one drive fails, you have a second drive with exactly the same information on. You can then purchase a new drive to replace the failed one and it will copy the information across onto the new drive - thus mirroring the information once more.  For low budget, this is a good system as it only costs the price of the additional drive and most computer towers would have the space to house it.

RAID 5 uses a system of Striping with Parity. You need 3 drives for this to work. This means that the data is spread across the three drives but a "parity" bit is written away too, which means that if one drive fails, you have enough data across the other two to rebuild the information when you install a new drive.  It takes a while to rebuild, but it gives you the speed as well as low cost backup options.

RAID 10 uses MIRRORING and STRIPED together. You require 4 drives for this to work.  The system will pair of two of the drives and stripe the information across the other pair. You then get the speed of striping as discussed in RAID 0 but with the redundancy coverage of RAID 1.  The down side is that you have to invest in 4 drives to make this system work. It all depends on the importance of speed and data recovery.

This is not a conclusive article on the benefits or negative outcomes on RAID. There are more in-depth discussions across the web. But we wanted to give a quick overview on the facilities available to users as data becomes more and more important.

Have fun and remember.. BACK IT UP!!