Many announcements from the Apple WorldWide Developers Conference 2014 (WWDC) today.

Apple announced OS X Yosemite, which will be a free upgrade for Macs.

Apple’s website has several pages showing the details with screenshots:

• Apple press release
• Apple – OS X Yosemite – Overview
• Apple – OS X Yosemite – Design
• Apple – OS X Yosemite – Apps
• Apple – OS X Yosemite  – Mac and iOS

Apple has made it available for Developers today as a beta download.  If you’re feeling adventurous, you can download it via Apple’s OS X Beta Program

The final version should be available as a free download from the Mac Store in the 3Q of 2014.

(Update : this meeting has been postponed due to the clash with Startup Weekend, we’ll announce a new date soon)

 

 

 

If you have been casually observing international headlines in the last few months, you have probably heard the term ‘bitcoin’ or ‘virtual-currency’.

Do you understand what that is and how it can affect you?

The Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society (TTCS) invites anyone who wants to learn more about ‘bitcoin’ and ‘virtual-currencies’ to join us for our Tech Meeting on Saturday 7th June 2014
(update: postponed ; new date to be announced) at
UWI Open Campus, Gordon Street, St. Augustine from 3pm to 5pm.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Decentralized currencies in Trinidad and Tobago:
  
  Rationale and outlook – Presented by Richard Jobity
• Digital Currencies: Challenge or Solution
  
  – Presented by Shiva Bissessar

This event is open to everyone and we look forward to your questions and feedback.

About our presenters:

Richard Jobity: An economist with over twenty years experience in the field of economics, with eleven years of that experience gained at a major financial institution.  His current interests include technology and competitive intelligence in developing countries.

Shiva Bissessar: ICT practitioner with MBA (UWI) and MSc, Information Security, (University College London) qualifications and 17 years of experience.  Currently runs a small consultancy firm in Trinidad and Tobago specializing in provision of technical advisory on clients’ efforts in developing ICT and Information Security policies, regulations and governance strategies.

For more information, contact the TTCS secretary at secretary@ttcsweb.org

 

Many theories regarding Truecrypt’s cryptic notice on its website that Truecrypt (an open source hard disk encryption program) is not secure.

Bombshell TrueCrypt advisory: Backdoor? Hack? Hoax? None of the above? | Ars Technica.

Via the Trinidad Guardian:

“While Government has not yet spent any funds to repair laptops given to secondary school students, $10 million will be spent this year to issue tenders for repairs and maintenance, plus extension of warranties, says Education Minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh. Speaking in the Senate yesterday, Gopeesingh said consideration was being given to seeking warranty extension for the laptops from one year to three years. Government has supplied 73,200 laptops to students from 2010 to 2013 at a cost of $253 million, he added.”

Read the rest of the article:
Govt spends $253m on laptop initiative | The Trinidad Guardian Newspaper.

Impressive demo from Microsoft who showed off their Skype Translator doing real time speech to speech translation in a Skype video call.

The Skype Translator app will available first on Windows 8 later this year as a limited beta.

Read the Microsoft blog post at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/translation/archive/2014/05/27/unveiling-breakthroughs-in-real-time-translation-with-skype-translator.aspx 

 

Popular digital currency bitcoin is expected to overtake e-commerce giant eBay’s payment processor PayPal in terms of US dollar transactions in the near future.

California-based hedge fund Laureate Trust says that bitcoin is fast establishing itself as the currency to use globally and instantly to make purchases or payments over the internet recording nearly $300m (£178m, €220m) daily in transactions.

“Whenever you have an instrument that trades over 300 million US dollars a day, it must be recognized,” Peter Tasca, CEO of Laureate Trust, said in a statement.

“The digital currency works, Bitcoin has greater volume transactions than Western Union and we anticipate it will overtake PayPal later this year.”

Read the full article at: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitcoin-set-overtake-ebays-paypal-transaction-volumes-1449856

Interesting workaround ; Windows Embedded POS Ready which is based on Windows XP SP3  is supported until April 2019.  By editing the Windows XP registry, updates made available for Windows Embedded POS Ready operating system will show up for installtion for Windows XP.

Read the Ghacks.net article How to get security updates for Windows XP until April 2019 | gHacks Technology News.

Detailed article from AnandTech on computer backups which every one (what do you mean, everyone?) using a computer should be doing.

Read AnandTech | Averting Disaster – A Guide To Computer Backups 2014.

A meeting of Caribbean Commonwealth officials with responsibility for ICT will bring the region’s eGovernance and cybercrime issues squarely into focus. The Caribbean Stakeholders’ Meeting on the Importance of ICTs and their Impact on Regional Development takes place in Port-of-Spain from today to Wednesday.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar will deliver the feature address at the opening ceremony for the high-profile three-day regional meeting, which aims to strengthen the region’s capacity for cyber security and online government services delivery. It is being convened by the Commonwealth Secretariat, in partnership with the Ministry of Science and Technology, Organisation of American States (OAS), International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Microsoft and the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU).

The ITU, OAS, CTU and Microsoft are active partners in the Commonwealth Cybercrime Initiative (CCI), an international programme started in 2011 to support member states in the implementation of robust cyber security programmes. The 53 member countries of the Commonwealth share similar legal systems and institutional structures, and have a long history of active collaboration on issues and concerns related to cybercrime and the Internet.

Cybercrime in focus at ICT talks | The Trinidad Guardian Newspaper.