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.

Great video from theguardian.com showcasing some of the best photo apps on your phone. Its amazing what your mobile phone can do in not only capturing photos but adjusting/editing them.

Watch the video at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2014/may/08/how-to-get-best-photo-apps-smartphone-video

Many of the links to the photo apps mentioned can be found at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/09/10-best-photography-apps

Via EBay’s Press Release:

eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) said beginning later today it will be asking eBay users to change their passwords because of a cyberattack that compromised a database containing encrypted passwords and other non-financial data. After conducting extensive tests on its networks, the company said it has no evidence of the compromise resulting in unauthorized activity for eBay users, and no evidence of any unauthorized access to financial or credit card information, which is stored separately in encrypted formats. However, changing passwords is a best practice and will help enhance security for eBay users.

Read the rest of the press release:
http://blog.ebay.com/ebay-inc-ask-ebay-users-change-passwords/

Do review and complete the one minute survey about mobile banking adoption in Trinidad and Tobago at

https://docs.google.com/a/ttcsweb.org/forms/d/1GEXoYLG284uA22WP1ArU-jbuIVb1MJ2mEk_J4dCfd_c/viewform

The survey is being done by Adesh Nandram (adesh_nandram at yahoo.com),  a student working on his Masters thesis “Mobile Banking as a Business Strategy: Impact of Mobile Technologies on Customer Behaviour and its Implications for banks in Trinidad and Tobago”