This is nice! Kevo’s keyless lock uses the iPhone 5 or 4S to wirelessly gain entry. And just incase that pesky iPhone 5 battery dies on you, you still get a real key. But the real winner here is the ability to send temporary ekeys to other people when ever you want. Nice! The lock runs on AA batteries and should last up to a year.

The good ol’ iphone boys get all the fun again. Check out Kevo’s website for more info on yet to be announced price and release dates.

Here are a few of the most common workplace security mistakes, as well as a few tips on how to avoid them:

1.    Losing Your Mobile Device

While not everyone has had the misfortune of having a device lost or stolen, it’s extremely likely to happen to at least one person in your workplace at some time. Just think of all the personal information you’ve sent in professional emails: Your contact information is in your email signature, you may have copies of client records in your “Sent” folder, and your HR manager likely has your social security information stored somewhere in their files. Despite those risks, a third of people don’t bother to protect their mobile devices with a PIN or password. To give you, your boss, and your coworkers peace of mind, you should also install security software that will locate, lock, and wipe your phone remotely in the case of device loss or theft.

2.    Downloading Risky Apps

Whenever you download an app on your smartphone, tablet, or laptop, you’re handing over your personal details to the developer of that app. While many apps require certain data to run (for example, Google Maps requires access to your location), some applications collect extensive information without your knowledge. Recent research found that more than 100,000 Android applications on Google Play are “suspicious” or “questionable” because of what they collect about users. Free apps are particularly suspect, and an app with access to your contact information can be used to mine information about your company’s employees. In turn, this information can easily be used to carry out sophisticated spearphishing attacks that can compromise your entire workplace.

3.    Working Remote – With or Without Your Corporate Device

According to a recent study, 46% of employees admit to transferring files to and from work and personal computers when working from home. This can pose a serious risk to your employer’s data, since personal computers are rarely protected or maintained as well as corporate devices. Talking about sensitive company issues where others can hear or intercept the conversation becomes much more common when you’re working from home or in a coffee shop. If you do work remotely, never hold work conversations in a place where you could be overheard, and always connect to a VPN over a secure Wi-Fi network (NOT the free Wi-Fi in your favorite café).

4.    Passwords on Post-Its

You’ve seen it; I’ve seen it. When your IT guy gives out a particularly complex password to remember, our first inclination is to write it down on a Post-It and stick it on the side of our work computer. In fact, 55% of us admit to sharing password details with friends, family, or coworkers – a habit that could leave corporate or personal data open to theft. To avoid this mistake while still maintaining a variety of complex passwords, try a password management system like McAfee Safe Key, which is included with your McAfee All Access subscription.

5.    Foregoing Security Software

No matter where you work, all employees need to understand that they are handling sensitive business data whenever they work from a personal or corporate device. Take some time to install a security solution on all of your mobile devices, and when it’s your phone or laptop that gets stolen, your coworkers (and boss) will thank you. It only takes a moment to download, and this step could save you a lot of time, money, and potentially your job.

credit goes to http://blogs.mcafee.com/consumer-threat-notices/top-5-mobile-security-mistakes-to-avoid-in-the-workplace

1. You notice that you pay more than usual for your mobile phone bill
This is a sign that some trojan might send SMSs or make phone calls to super expensive phone numbers, sometimes even oversees. The problem with these calls is that it is very hard to prove that you didn’t manually and intentionally made them. Most of the time the mobile phone operator will ask you to pay first and then explain later.

 
2. Data usage increase
Malware usually sends back your private data to the cybercriminals that created it. If you notice an increase in the data usage or if your provider is slowing down your data transfer because you consumed too much in a month, it might be a sign that malicious software communicates without your knowledge.

 
3. Calls are interrupted often and SMSs don’t reach their destination
Even if you see that you have maximum reception sometimes the most basic functions of the phone don’t work reliably. Sometimes malware tries to intercept the calls and even re-route them to more expensive numbers or through proxies.

 
4. Battery consumption grows unexpectedly
If without using your phone more than usual you notice that the battery drains, there might be some program that is residing in the active memory. Such programs can be trojans that try to intercept the calls and SMSs you make.

 
5. Bad overall performance of the smartphone
If your smartphone becomes slower than usual and apps take much longer to start and function, something might be using the CPU and the memory of the phone. Review the last apps you installed and try to uninstall them to check whether one of them is consuming the resources. However, note that this might not solve your problem if you installed a malicious app. Most of the malicious apps install backdoors in your device and will download additional payload without you noticing.

 
6. Apps crash unexpectedly
If apps that usually worked without problems and didn’t get updated lately, suddenly start to crash, might be a sign that something is interfering with their functionality. It could also be that your smartphone doesn’t have anymore resources to run the app because something else is using it (see 5).

credit goes to http://techblog.avira.com/2013/04/29/is-your-smartphone-infected/en/

You rely on your smartphone for many things. One area that is lacking is integration with your TV watching. At best, the smartphone was used as a simple remote control to change channels. New apps make use of your phone as a search tool and scheduler. Finally, the phone and TV might really work together.

DirecTV Taps Into Your Phone

This summer, DirecTV will release into beta its latest app, DirecTV Voice. They have been working with Nuance, creators of Dragon Naturally Speaking, to create a voice controlled app to search DirecTV channels for your favorite shows. Their goal is to finally get rid of scrolling through the program grid displayed on the TV screen to find programs.

By using voice recognition, they are trying to also get away from pushing buttons or sliding through nested menus. Nuance is the county’s premier voice recognition specialists so they plan this release to have a high rate of success with this voice-driven application. Think of it as Siri with infinite knowledge of TV shows and movies.

Continue reading »

There is no doubt that iOS is in desperate need of upgrading. It has been around too long in it’s current state. Android and more specifically Windows Phone have a much more intuitive and modern look. Apple even borrowed some of Androids notification goodness in iOS 5. Now it seems that Apple may borrow some of Microsoft’s Metro UI flava for it’s own in the upcoming release of iOS 7. 9to5Mac is stating that multiple sources are claiming the new interface and general design will be “very, very flat”. While other sources are stating that the new design "loses all signs of gloss, shine and skeumorphism"

Jony Ive, who is now in charge of the iOS design team is said to favor the Metro minimalistic style and bring elements of that UI into Apple’s new UI that should be previewed at the WWDC 2013. Macrumors has a pretty cool mockup of the new UI and I can already tell you I am not a fan. What makes the “flat” style work on Windows Phones is that it is now tunable to your own desire by being able to make the truly live tiles bigger or smaller and move them around at will.

If these formerly called icons could be more like Android widgets and have the scalability of Windows Phone I think it would be more of a hit. It is also being stated that the "new panels [that] swipe from the left and right side of an iOS device’s display."

So it could very well possibly be that iOS 7 falls flat in a good way, but Apple better have something more up it’s sleeve than the mocked up image or it could find it’s not so shiny new UI falling flat in a bad way.

The popular Android personal assistant has not come to the iPad and iPhone but I don’t look for it to replace Siri anytime soon. Even though I have a love hate relationship with Siri there is a deeper integration that with Google Search which is where Google Now is buried. First thing is to fire up your iOS device and head to iTunes and either download or update Google Search. Once downloaded and you fire it up, the Google Search screen is pretty boring. At the bottom of the screen there are some notifications that you can lift up (swipe) and will display multiple cards. The cards will appear based off your location results and selections for example with sports and teams. When you are done with a card you can swipe it the heck out of there. Which is kind of neat. I’m still working with Google Now for iPad but so far I am pretty underwhelmed and the Android experience with Google Now is much better.

Apple outs their new iPhone 5 commercial heavily advertising the wonders of the 5′s camera. For years now, Apple has been leading the industry in camera quality, starting with the 3GS and really coming to fame with the 4.

But, today, things are a bit different. With the Lumia 920 leading the industry with the best overall shooter, the HTC One right behind it with only a 4MP rating and the brand new SG4 calling it a close tie with the iPhone 5, things are surely different.

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Q&A with Eric Schmidt hosted by WSJ’s AllThingsD, it’s long so here are the takeaways.

An audience member notes that Windows Phone chief Terry Myerson of Microsoft just accused Google of mobilizing to  squash Facebook Home, that he “’wouldn’t be shocked if Google were trying to block out Facebook Home right now,’ but what’s to keep you guys from removing it from removing the app from the store and having people sideload it instead?”

Schmidt cuts him off, “Why are you listening to Microsoft’s statements about Google? … So you’ve now constructed using Microsoft a scenario that’s highly unlikely, why don’t you ask Microsoft some basic questions about their products and their strategy? [Blocking Facebook Home] would be counter to our public statements, our policies, our religion – anything else? I want to make sure I’ve answered your question. The answer is no.”

Argh this is taking too long to transcribe, just watch the thing if you’d like, slow but interesting, also that way you can get a better read on Schmidt’s intonation and inflection to further understand his genius and pricelessly dry sense of humor:

From the Jailbreak Community for the iPhone comes a new app that will give your lock screen some more functionality missing from iOS 6. It’s called Atom and it allows you to add 6 icons to your lock screen that you can open by dragging a grabber button over the app icon you want to open right from your lock screen. You are limited to just 6 icons on your lock screen at this time but can customize it with any app you want.

It is available at the Big Boss repository for $1.99.

[9to5mac via @the_gadgeteur]

Today is World Book Day. No, I can’t say I’ve heard of it, either, and I’m a bookworm.

But in any event, in case you’re in iPhone or iPad user, and you have kids, today ONLY you can get StoryToys’ apps FREE.

So GO! Share the love of books with your wee geeks.

(Note, since I don’t have iTunes on my laptop, and refuse to install that piece of junk, I copied the link above from totallytarget.com. You can find the original article here, and if my copy of their link doesn’t work, try it directly from their site.)