News

Check Your Home Network

Computer Culture Admin - Thursday, November 16, 2017

Bitdefender, the home version of our managed antivirus has developed a home network scanner to enable you to check for any dodgy devices on your network, it’s available as a free download.

Bitdefender Home Scanner lets you see all devices connected to your home network. You get an alert every time an unknown device connects to your wi-fi. Which means you can instantly boot out freeloaders and prevent connection slowdowns.

Home Scanner looks for weak passwords, as well as vulnerable or poorly encrypted communications. It correlates the information gathered from your connected devices with online vulnerability databases and gives you a thorough report so you can ensure maximum security for your network.

For more information go to Bitdefenders website here.

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Does your house need a Google Home?

Computer Culture Admin - Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Though there are multiple options for voice-activated smart assistants available in the US, the launch of Google Home marks the first official entry of this exciting new category into Australia.

This cute little speaker essentially acts as a hub for all things Google in your house, performing tasks you might already do on your phone or computer — quick web searches, streaming music and TV shows, interacting with smart home gadgets — but it does it all with a quick spoken request from you.

Given how hit-and-miss voice services are in general, the reviewer was immediately impressed with how naturally you can interact with the Home. It can hear you whispering from across the room, can learn to differentiate different members of the household, and can parse natural-language requests regardless of your syntax, so you don't have to remember many exact phrases to get to what you want.

Just say "OK Google" or "Hey Google" to make it listen — you can tell by the colourful lights that appear on its surface — and then make your request. The Google Assistant replies in a soft, female voice, answering your questions or confirming the operations it's carrying out on your connected devices.

Let the music play
The first query the app suggested to be tried after setup was "OK Google, play some music". Home, of course, had no problem carrying out the simple request, immediately pumping out some 80s rock.

As a music player Home is surprisingly competent, one the nicest sounding speakers of its size, even at full volume. It can be used just like a Chromecast Audio, sending directions from any compatible app to play on the speaker, and an update rolling out soon will let you connect via Bluetooth if the app you're using doesn't cast.

Most convenient though is just asking for what you want to hear. You can be as broad or as specific as you like, asking for genres, moods, artists, albums or songs. If you want a specific version, just add more details.

You'll need Spotify Premium or a YouTube Red / Google Play Music subscription. Once you've trained Home to recognise the voice of each person in your household, it will use their Play Music library to tailor choices to them.

It will also easily pull music you've personally uploaded to your Play library.

You can ask for the radio too. If you have Chromecasts in your home you can also choose to beam your audio to any speaker or groups of speakers you like, as easily as saying "OK Google, play Metallica in the lounge room".

Hidden smarts
Beyond being a media player, Home can connect to a multitude of services — Google owned and otherwise — to quickly fetch info and fulfil tasks in a fraction of the time it would take you on your phone.

This is great for the dozens of quick queries you might usually Google each day — "what time will the sun set tonight?", or "what is 800 ounces in grams?" — but also for information you might get from other apps, like weather forecasts, news on a particular topic, or where the nearest burger joint is.

Home can also read your calendar so you can ask "when's my first meeting", "what do I have on today" or "can you schedule a lunch meeting at 1pm Thursday". Unfortunately this currently only works with the main calendar of your Google account.

It can also be used to set timers, alarms, and reminders.

Smart home pioneers can use Home to interact with certain brands of connected light globes, powerpoints and more as well. The selection is a bit limited, but there is full compatibility with IFTTT, so you can apply your own recipes and, for example, have all your globes turn on when you say "OK Google, lights up".

If you watch TV on a cast-enabled device, Home will also pull down shows from Netflix, and YouTube just fine.

Of course, like any voice-activated tech it's also fun just to chat to it and see what it says. You'll occasionally get a bemused dead end, but there's a surprising amount of simulated wit packed in.

Overall Home has been adapted very well to life in Australia. The language recognition is top notch, the responses are in-depth and conversational, and it makes heaps of tiny tasks a little bit simpler. Future updates will doubtlessly add more functionality as well but if there was one hardware feature I'd like to see in a Home 2 it's a bit of battery power so it could be carried temporarily to a different room.

For the original article click here.

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Microsoft Surface Pro

Computer Culture Admin - Thursday, July 13, 2017

Computer Culture have joined a small select group of companies to become an official Microsoft Surface Product Reseller.

We are now able to source directly:

The New Surface Pro
Surface Pro 4
Surface Laptop
Surface Book
Surface Studio

The new Surface Pro is 8.5mm thick and weighs only 786 grams. Processors options includes m3, i5 and i7, hard drive sizes ranging from 128Gb up to 1TB and memory 4Gb up to 16GB. Battery life is claimed to be 13.5 hours.

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Paying with your face

Steve Hirst - Thursday, June 22, 2017

Face-detecting systems will soon be regularly used to authorise payments, provide access to buildings and track down criminals and terrorists.

Face recognition might transform everything from policing to the way people interact every day with banks, stores, and transportation services.

Already governments in some countries are using software to identify suspected criminals in video from surveillance cameras.

The technology has taken off in China because of the country's attitudes toward surveillance and privacy. Unlike countries such as the United States, China has a large centralised database of ID card photos.

Facial recognition has existed for decades, but only now is it accurate enough to be used in secure financial transactions. The new versions use deep learning, an artificial-intelligence technique that is especially effective for image recognition because it makes a computer zero in on the facial features that will most reliably identify a person.

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Smart Spinach

Steve Hirst - Monday, March 20, 2017

Spinach is no longer just a superfood: by embedding leaves with carbon nanotubes, MIT engineers have transformed spinach plants into sensors that can detect explosives and wirelessly relay that information to a handheld device similar to a smartphone.

This is one of the first demonstrations of engineering electronic systems into plants, an approach that the researchers call “plant nanobionics.”

“The goal of plant nanobionics is to introduce nanoparticles into the plant to give it non-native functions,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the leader of the research team.

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Amazon Echo

Steve Hirst - Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Alexa, a cloud-based speech recognition software from Amazon and the brain of its black cylindrical loudspeaker Echo, has been a big hit around the world – except for the younger ones, who take it for granted. Children will grow up alongside it, just as Alexa will evolve, as the AI powering it learns to answer more and more questions, and perhaps one day even converses freely with people.

For further information on the advancements to speech recognition, visit the original BBC article here.

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The Risk from the Internet of Things

Steve Hirst - Friday, January 20, 2017

The Internet of Things has experienced a huge surge in growth and popularity thanks to its main stream exposure due to the likes of smart TV's, Internet fridges, smart grids, and smart homes.

With the inclusion of anything from urban transport to medical devices to household appliances, the Internet of Things has become a large part of our lives. These unusual "smart objects" or "smart devices", that have never been capable of inter-networking on a global scale before, have for the most part made our lives easier. However as with all new developments, it's also brought its own fair share of risks. Cyber criminals have more ways than ever before to make money off the unaware, underprepared or uneducated.

Unsecured Devices
More often than not, the security functionality embedded within the IoT device is largely insufficient, due to a lack of local resources or capacity. A good example of this are car manufacturer’s like Land Rover; having to recall vehicles for instance, because their on-board computers had security weaknesses that allowed criminals to easily steal them, or in extreme cases, even control them remotely. Ultimately however, security will need to be built into IoT products by the vendors. Cheap, ubiquitous, and insecure IoT devices are ultimately the cyber criminal’s best friend.
Weak Entry Points
IoT devices that are poorly secured on networks; with known or easily guessed passwords and passcodes are the ideal point of entry for cyber criminals. It’s even better if the device happens to be a router or network control device, as the criminals can modify the firewall and network services to their nefarious ends. Even so called “risk-free” endpoints, such as Internet fridges, have potential exploits because of susceptible functions such as sending emails. To help combat this, IoT devices need to be protected, by locking down admin rights and changing default passwords by adding in as much complexity as possible. It may also pay to segregate IoT devices to a firewalled and possibly non-routable network.
Surveillance Hijacking
Have you got a PC or laptop with a webcam? Cyber criminals can potentially use your computer’s camera to see into your home or office, and even listen in if they can get access to your device’s microphone. This breach isn’t just limited to visual and audio access however – a compromised IoT device on your network can passively and actively learn about the rest of your network. Due to their common operating system, hackers have a good chance of installing common malware to learn all they can about you or your company. This again reinforces the fact that all your IoT devices need to be locked down, and not just the central control point. Regular security sweeps should be done to check for unusual behavior, and be prepared to reset devices back to their factory settings. Where possible it would pay to isolate your IoT devices from your main network.
Hijacked for Criminal Activity
IoT in the health care sector presents an exciting opportunity, not just for passively collecting patient observations, but also controlling medical devices in real time, in response to collected observations. Imagine a heart monitor for instance, that constantly sends heart data to a system that analyses it, along with blood oxygen levels etc. It then decides to modify one of the control units – maybe to deliver a drug to the patient. In the wrong hands, this setup could result in death. Accessing other IoT devices can offer cyber criminals a lot of control over your life, especially keyless entry systems for your home, garage, gate, or car that can be cloned to give the criminal physical access. It’s essential for users to choose IoT products with proven security credentials. Greater security will likely cost more than the weaker IoT devices.
Unknown Network Use
Do you know how much of your home or business infrastructure is IoT connected? Recently an independent security organisation scanned the 900 MHz bandwidth used by IoT wireless devices and much to their client’s astonishment, found that their HVAC system was IoT-connected. The client didn’t know this and wasn’t responsible for its security. The HVAC devices were also identified to have default passwords and very little in the way of security. If a hacker had gained access to these devices, they could have caused a potentially devastating amount of damage to the business. This is a good lesson for all of us, businesses need to scan for IoT devices on their network constantly. Ultimately, company’s need to know what is normal before they can know isn’t normal, and take necessary actions to correct it.
Convenience and Price over Security
Security can fall by the wayside if IoT vendors are trying to provide an Apple-like experience of simplicity and convenience, or attempting to compete based on price. Plug-and-play without configuration should not be possible – some configuration by the consumer is needed so they can at least program the IoT device with a passcode or password that only they know. If you just plug a device into your network without any configuration, then you have more than likely created an opportunity for a cybercriminal. Consumers need to be more technology-savvy and vote with their wallets – only buying products that are offering sufficient levels of security. Industry standards don’t exist for IoT device security, and many products are not interoperable using differing technologies. Therefore, the best way for consumers to become IoT-security savvy is to educate themselves by talking to industry professionals like Computer Culture.
You can’t secure insecure IoT Devices
Some IoT devices, especially those that offer plug-and-play installation, can be difficult, sometimes impossible, to configure – especially devices that are embedded and need special diagnostic equipment to interface with them. In this instance, the user needs to check whether (and how) the IoT device is configurable and securable. If it’s not, they need to think twice about purchasing it due to the inherent risks of adding an insecure IoT device to their network. The fact that the device can be a household device, such as a fridge, is unimportant. Security research has shown that hackers can use Internet fridges to send spam and learn about the rest of the network its connected to, for a future criminal act.
Forgotten IoT Devices
People can sometimes forget about older or unused devices, and some of these will likely be IoT-enabled. These devices might not be monitored or maintained but are likely to remain on the network. These devices have the potential to become a risk over time as security exploits are left unpatched. Once an attacker finds such a device, they will find a way to hijack it. These devices need to be repurposed or disposed of in an appropriate and secure manner.

If your concerned about your IoT devices and want to know what you can do to help mitigate these issues, come talk to one of our friendly team.

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New Technology

Steve Hirst - Friday, January 20, 2017

IoT and Smart Home Tech.
We will see much more integration and development in the Internet of Things and Smart Homes area with Amazon, Google and Apple getting involved.

AR and VR.
We will see significant developments in the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology with companies producing software and apps.

Machine Learning.
Machines and systems using a type of artificial intelligence will become much better at recommending products based on prior purchase history to gradually improving the user experience.

Automation.
Advanced technology will enable the automation of previously human-exclusive tasks.

Physical-Digital Integrations.
We will see more use of our smartphones to find and pay digitally then collect the goods from a physical location

Everything On-Demand.
To satisfy our desire to have everything on demand through our smartphones, we will see many more of the ‘Uber’ type apps

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Selfie Drone

Steve Hirst - Sunday, December 18, 2016

Lastly something fun for Christmas. We haven’t tried one of these ourselves, but they look like fun.

JJRC have released a foldable G-sensor Mini remote controlled selfie drone for under $60.

It has altitude hold, WiFi for smartphone remote control, 720P video and selfie camera, 6 axis gyro plus 3D flips and rolls.

See a video of it in action here.

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Must Have Apps

Steve Hirst - Sunday, December 18, 2016

We all have our favourite phone apps and we have been featuring a number in our past newsletters. Some users just use their smart phones for making calls, texts, taking photos and the occasional visit to Facebook.
Here is a list of some of the apps that our staff use to get more out of their smart phones.

• AA Smartfuel
• Air NZ
• Bank App
• CellarTracker
• Dropbox
• Evernote
• Entertainment
• Facebook
• Fly Buys
• Google Drive
• Here WeGo
• iTunes
• Kerbside Collection
• LinkedIn
• MetService
• Netflix
• Office Lens
• OneDrive
• OneNote
• Shazam
• Skype
• Sky TV
• SkyGo
• Snap Send Solve
• Spotify
• SoundHound
• Stocard
• Stuff
• Trade Me
• TradeMe Property
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Viber
• Uber
• Wunderlist

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