Lots of announcements from Apple’s March 9 “Spring Forward” event.

You can watch the full keynote of Apple’s March 9 “Spring Forward” on Apple’s site or if you don’t have time to watch the entire video, check out AppleInsider’s 2 min report:

 

Here are several links for more details that Apple mentioned

Apple Watch

http://youtu.be/1Ql0Z8Il73s

Available April 24, 2015, the Apple Watch is available in two case sizes : 38mm and 42mm. However, the Apple watch comes in three style collections:

• Apple Watch – 20 models with stainless steel or space black steel cases with the display protected by sapphire crystal.
• Apple Watch Sport – 10 models with aluminum cases in silver or space grey with the display protected by strengthened Ion-X glass
• Apple Watch Edition – 8 models in 18-karat gold cases in yellow or rose colours with the display protected by sapphire crystal

All collections have a variety of bands. The Apple’s Watch page is fairly detailed with many pictures and videos and prices start from $349 US to $17,000 US.

Apple MacBook

Apple’s new MacBook is a thin (13.1mm thin) and light (2lb) notebook with a 12″ Retina display, 8GB RAM and integrated Intel Graphics 5300, new Force Touch trackpad and new keyboard and a single USB-C port for charging, video out and data transfer. The Macbook is available in gold, space grey and silver colours.

There are two models

• 256GB flash storage and 1.1Ghz Intel Core M CPU for $1,299 US
• 512GB flash storage and 1.2 Ghz Intel Core M CPU for $1,599 US

Ars Technica has a writeup and hands on look. Apple’s Macbook page also has many details, photos and videos.

ResearchKit

http://youtu.be/VyY2qPb6c0c

ResearchKit is an open source framework that makes it easy for developers and researchers to create apps to gather more frequently and more accurately from participants using iOS devices.

Apple’s ResearchKit page has more details including how several medical institutions are using ResearchKit already.

Updated Macbook Pro and Macbook Airs

The 13″ MacBook Pro and the 11″ and 13″ MacBook Air also were upgraded.

Ars Technica has a great summary of the updates

Apple’s Compare Notebook models page is also useful.

iOS 8.2 released

iOS 8.2 was released to support the Apple Watch and for any device that runs iOS 8. The update also has various bug fixes and security updates.

FYI, Today (March 10), Apple also posted a security update 2014-002 for Mac OS X “Mountain Lion” 10.8.5 to “Yosemite” 10.10.2

HBO NOW

You will be available to subscribe to HBO NOW and watch HBO content from your Apple device for $14.99 US a month on demand. See Apple’s press release for details.

 

 

The World Bank has launched an initiative to encourage the publishing of open data in Trinidad and Tobago and to assist with its subsequent adoption and use by the Government, public/private sector and civil society.

What data do you think you should have access to?
What opportunities would be created by having access to such data?

Please complete the World Bank survey at
http://bit.ly/WorldBankTT-OpenData-survey by Sunday March 8 2015.

The survey results would feed in to the ‘Open Data Readiness Assessment’ that the locally assigned World Bank team is currently conducting, and it would help to inform what priority areas should be tackled as the project moves forward into implementation.

Background about Open Data

Open Data is the idea that the Government should make available to others as much as possible of the non-sensitive data which it collects in the course of its operations.  The data would be available in raw, machine-readable form for reuse for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

The idea is relatively new, but where other Governments have already started to do this, there have been benefits in terms of economic growth, innovation and jobs, closer citizen engagement in improving public services, transparency and accountability, and in improving the efficiency and operations of public services themselves.

On February 28 2015, the World Bank team gave a presentation to civil society representatives, including those from the Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society (TTCS) and the Internet Society Trinidad and Tobago Chapter (ISOC-TT).

The slides from the presentation can be viewed below:

http://www.slideshare.net/trinidad-tobago-computer-society/20150228-opendatacivilsociety01

Additional Resources about Open Data

• The Open Data Handbook
• Open Data Guide
• Open Data Foundation

If you’re a developer of Android mobile apps from either Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, Google now supports registration as a Google Wallet Merchant from those territories.  This means that such developers can sell apps to users and receive money.

Google Play Registration (which allows persons  to publish apps on Google Play) was already available to many countries in the Caribbean. Similarly, many users in the Caribbean can download (and buy) apps from the Google Play store. However, the ability to receive money means that developer can set prices for their applications, allow users to buy their apps and receive money from the Google Play Store.

Trinidad and Tobago and many other Caribbean territories are not as fortunate. See which locations support Google Play Developer and Merchant Registration

H/T : Android Police

http://youtu.be/QmYc1MNJaQc

Adobe Photoshop was released on February 19, 1990. For Photoshop’s 25th anniversary, Adobe has a commemorative site with links to articles and a timeline of milestones for Adobe Photoshop.

Check out the Celebrating 25 years of Photoshop page and the related Adobe blog post

Bad news for users of Lenovo’s computers. Many Lenovo computers with Windows have been preinstalled with software from a company called Superfish.

This software injects ads as you browse web pages, including secure web pages.  Secure web pages are the websites that you would use “https” instead of “http” and include websites that offer cloud services (such as email, social networks, banking, and e-commerce) that require users to login.

Here’s what Ars Technica says:

The critical threat is present on Lenovo PCs that have adware from a company called Superfish installed. As unsavory as many people find software that injects ads into Web pages, there’s something much more nefarious about the Superfish package. It installs a self-signed root HTTPS certificate that can intercept encrypted traffic for every website a user visits. When a user visits an HTTPS site, the site certificate is signed and controlled by Superfish and falsely represents itself as the official website certificate.

Even worse, the private encryption key accompanying the Superfish-signed Transport Layer Security certificate appears to be the same for every Lenovo machine. Attackers may be able to use the key to certify imposter HTTPS websites that masquerade as Bank of America, Google, or any other secure destination on the Internet. Under such a scenario, PCs that have the Superfish root certificate installed will fail to flag the sites as forgeries—a failure that completely undermines the reason HTTPS protections exist in the first place.

Lenovo’s statement on Superfish mentions which Lenovo models had Superfish installed.

So, Lenovo Windows users, how to test if you’re vulnerable to Superfish?

Two sites that test if you have Superfish installed are https://filippo.io/Badfish/ . Visit those sites with the browsers installed (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera, Mozilla Firefox).

If you see a “YES”, you have Superfish installed, see https://filippo.io/Badfish/removing.html which has detailed instructions on removing Superfish from your computer. After you’ve done so, visit https://filippo.io/Badfish/ again to check.

Its not clear if the Lenovo laptops issued by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago to first year secondary students since 2011 are vulnerable since most of the models that Lenovo preinstalled the Superfish adware/malware were consumer models and not business ones.

But it never hurts to check to be absolutely sure.

Another security flaw for Adobe Flash Player being exploited in the wild means another security update for Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Mac and Linux, the FOURTH update in 5 weeks.

According to the Adobe Security Bulletin dated February 5 2015:

Adobe has released security updates for Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Macintosh and Linux.  These updates address vulnerabilities that could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

Adobe is aware of reports that CVE-2015-0313 is actively being exploited in the wild via drive-by-download attacks against systems running Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows 8.1 and below.

So update ASAP!

The latest versions bumps the latest version of Flash Player for Windows and Mac OS X to version 16.0.0.305.

Orrr…… if you only use Adobe Flash for watching YouTube videos, YouTube now defaults to HTML5 instead of Adobe Flash for playing videos in Google Chrome, IE 11, Apple Safari 8 and in beta versions of Firefox. So you can uninstall Adobe Flash if you are using Adobe Flash and these browsers.

But many conferencing solutions (like Adobe Connect) and Flash games require Flash support, so if you fall in the latter camp, update ASAP!

To determine what version of the Adobe Flash player you have on your Windows, Macintosh or Linux system, visit http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

To download the latest version of Adobe Flash Player without any adware or bundled third party offers, visit
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html

Windows users should note that the Flash Player in Microsoft Internet Explorer v9 and earlier versions of Internet Explorer and the Flash player in web browsers like Opera, Mozilla Firefox and Safari are separate installs.
You should install and update both versions of Adobe Flash.

For Internet Explorer v10 and Internet Explorer v11 (for users for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows 8), these browsers have Adobe Flash Player built-in and users should update their Internet Explorer browser versions.

Google Chrome browser users has Adobe Flash Player built-in and users should update the Google Chrome browser to the latest version. See https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95414 on how to do so.

The Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society is pleased to announce the release of the TTCS OSSWIN DVD v1.4, a collection of the latest version of Free and Open Source Software for Microsoft Windows (XP/Vista/7/8)

You can use your web browser to read detailed information about each program in this compilation : what the program does, its key features, useful related websites, view a screenshot, find links to the program’s website and to download/install the program from the TTCS OSSWIN DVD.

The web-based interface allows you to quickly browse the variety of software organised  into the following categories:

• Desktop Applications
• Educational
• Games
• Graphics
• Internet
• Server
• Sound and Video
• Utilities

There were numerous software updates (see the changelog).

See the TTCS OSSWIN DVD page at http://www.ttcsweb.org/osswin-dvd/ for more details, including a complete listing of programs included on the DVD, download links and checksum information to verify the download.

To commemorate the 25th anniversary (April 28 2014) of the establishment of the Caribbean Telecommunication Union (CTU), the CTU will be hosting a 25th Anniversary ICT week programme of ICT activities event under the theme: Celebrating: Our Journey to ICT-enabled Development from the 2nd to 6th February, 2015 at the Hyatt Regency Trinidad Hotel. The activities will culminate in the inauguration of CTU’s new Headquarters.

Read the CTU agenda of ICT activities

Whilst there are registration fees if you want to attend in person (email [email protected] to find out if this is still possible), several of the sessions offer remote participation. Visit https://zoom.us/j/299331303 with your desktop or mobile device at the time of the session.

Also taking place during the CTU ICT week is the ION Conference, hosted by the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme, which bring network engineers and leading industry experts together to discuss emerging technologies including IPv6, DNSSEC, TLS, and more.

Early adopters provide valuable insight into their own deployment experiences and bring participants up to speed on new standards emerging from the IETF.

You can learn more about ION Trinidad and Tobago, including what’s on the agenda, and who will be speaking, at http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/ion/trinidad2015/agenda/.  Ars Technica also has an article about ION Conference in Trinidad.