Volume 1, Issue 1

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Could Myspace Make a Mini Comeback?...2

Rewriting Reality with Microsoft’s Hologram Headset...3

Identifying Credit Card Users With a Few Bits of Data...4

BYOD and the Education System...5

Tech Jokes

1. Why is it that programmers always confuse Halloween with Christmas? Because 31 OCT = 25 DEC

2. I would tell you a UDP joke, but you might not get it.

3. If you put a million monkeys on a million keyboards, one of them will eventually write a Java program. The rest of them will write Perl programs.

4. There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.

It’s the start of the second month of the year and some of you might have already done away with your New Year’s resolution. To help you to get back on track we have made available to you a few tech tips that will help you to get through this year with the least amount of glitches possible.

Invest in a power bank. Never be left with a dead battery.

Do not use your corporate or school email account for social media accounts. Hackers leverage personal information found on social media to figure out secret question answers.

Use two forms of account verification. Text, Keyword, or Image as a secondary.

Simplify technology in your personal life, more devices doesn’t always make you more productive.

Go paperless. Use the notes section to keep lists or download a list builder application. Shopping lists get forgotten, phones do not.

Keep copies of important data backed up to the cloud or a portable hard drive stored in a fireproof safe.

Use the Do Not Disturb feature on your phone so those late night emails don’t buzz you awake. Sleep is critical to success.

Source: http://www.netrixit.com/netrix-it/news-events/tech-tips-for-2015.html

Could MySpace make a mini comeback?

Tech Tips for Your Personal Life in 2015

Your question after reading the title is probably - MySpace, is that still a thing? Well apparently you’re not the only one asking as this question seems to be creating a bit of a buzz in the tech world. To answer your question though, yes it is still a thing and according to the Wall Street Journal MySpace has actual seen an increase in user numbers!

“The site saw 575 percent growth in unique users in the last year. Of course, 525 percent of 0 is still 0, so to prove its thesis the WSJ cited a surprising statistic: MySpace still has 50 million monthly active users.”

So it looks like MySpace is making a mini comeback … or at least kind of. The social site started as a place for music and entertainment creators and fans to connect, so that still represents the bulk of the activity. They watch enough videos on the site to make MySpace the 16th most popular online video

provider according to Comscore.

According to the original article and data collected a big chunk of the company’s monthly activities come on Thursdays due to the popularity

of Throwback Thursday, the social media phenomenon where people post old pictures of themselves under the hashtag #tbt.

It’s unlikely the company will ever near the heights of its former glory, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t reestablish itself as a tool for a particular sect of music-loving youth. So there you have it the believed-to-be-defunct service lives on; perhaps a shadow of its former self, but still very much alive.

Reference: DeAmicis Carmel (2015, Jan. 15) Could Myspace Make a Mini Comeback. Retrieved from https://gigaom.com/2015/01/15/could-myspace-make-a-mini-comeback/

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Google Chrome Windows and Tabs Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows OS

Ctrl+N - Opens a new window.

Ctrl+T- Opens a new tab.

Ctrl+Shift+N - Opens a new window in incognito mode.

Ctrl+O, then select file. - Opens a file from your computer in Google Chrome.

Ctrl and click a link.. - Opens the link in a new tab in the background .

Ctrl+Shift and click link.-

Opens the link in a new tab and switches to the newly opened tab.

Shift and click a link. - Opens the link in a new window.

Ctrl+Shift+T - Reopens the last tab you've closed. (Chrome remembers the last 10 tabs you've closed.)

Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+PgDown - Switches to the next tab.

Ctrl+Shift+Tab or Ctrl+PgUp - Switches to the previous tab.

Alt+F4 or Ctrl + Shift + W - Closes the current window.

Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4 - Closes the current tab or pop-up.

Rewriting Reality with Microsoft’s Hologram Headset by Aldayne Martin

Microsoft has just revealed its next great innovation: Windows Holographic. It is being described as “the most advanced holographic computer the world has ever seen.” This augmented reality headset is slated for release this year inside of the Windows 10 “timeframe”.

It is a compact, visor-styled device called Hololens which generates holograms that make 3-D objects appear to the wearer that is then overlaid on the real world.

The headset is wireless and does not need to be paired with either a computer or a phone. Depth sensors in the device means that virtual objects can be interactive and can integrate smoothly into the real world. Headphones built into the device produce spatial sound, thus giving the impression that virtual objects are producing sound, even if they are behind

you. This device can be classified as a self-contained computer, sporting a CPU, a GPU, and a dedicated holographic processor.

The Hololens promises interactive virtual presence as its primary

selling point, with big potential advantages for research, remote collaboration, engineering and design work. Microsoft is now working with other companies to develop apps and other experiences for Hololens.

Microsoft has already collaborated on one app for its Hololens. NASA has revealed the prototype will be used to enable its scientists to work virtually on Mars. They’ll be able to plan experiments on the red planet with the help of the Curiosity rover via OnSight software.

Microsoft’s already exploring ways of using their new Hololens technology with the Xbox One, which means a more interactive gaming experience for all gamers out there.

The possibilities are endless!

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6 Reasons You Should Set Expiration Dates on Your Text Messages

1. You won’t be reminded of unfortunate Tinder choices. - Let’s face it: We’ve all made poor dating decisions that very likely resulted in an awkward digital conversation you would prefer to forget.

2. It’s easier to keep secrets. - Look, if you are carrying on an extensive affair or spying on the U.S. government, enabling this feature won’t be enough to protect your wild & crazy lifestyle. But it can help you avoid getting in trouble if your phone slips into the wrong hands.

3. You’ll avoid the painful burn of a bad breakup. - People say things & then change their minds. Let those old texts die along with the relationship.

4. It’ll make your phone a lot faster. - Enabling a purge can free up space & make the app work faster. I mean, that’s just practical.

5. There’s something freeing about it. - Having an automated tool that keeps the clutter out. No guilt there.

6. Sexts. - Self-explanatory!

Read full article : http://tinyurl.com/oz5mzwv

Identifying Credit Card Users With a Few Bits of Data By Charles Choi

Anonymized credit card data can easily be used to identify credit card users, more evidence that anonymizing data does not protect privacy as well as often thought, scientists now find.

Personal information often gets anonymized by stripping it of names, home addresses, phone numbers and other obvious identifying details. Such data often get shared, and underlie popular services such as Google’s real-time traffic monitoring, which shows conditions on major thoroughfares in more than 50 different countries.

However, anonymized data can still reveal a great deal about individuals. For example, computational social scientist Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye at MIT and his colleagues recently found that anonymized cell phone data could be better at identifying users than fingerprints. At most, 11 randomly chosen interactions with cell phone networks were needed to identify a person by the routes he or she regularly traveled, while identifying someone by a fingerprint requires at least 12 reference points.

To see how well anonymized credit card data protected privacy, de Montjoye and his colleagues at MIT and Aarhus University in Denmark analyzed three months' worth of information from 1.1 million people living in an unidentified developed country in the Organization for

Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED). They detailed their findings in the Jan. 30 issue of the journal Science.

The researchers found that knowing when and where four credit card transactions occurred was enough to identify 90 percent of people from this anonymized metadata. Even when the data are less specific — for instance, purchases within a certain geographic area instead of a certain

shop, or within 15 days instead of one day — individuals could be re-identified with a half-dozen or so more additional data points. Adding one more piece of data, the price of a certain transaction, could increase the

chance of re-identification by 22 percent on average. Women and people in higher income brackets proved easier to identify, potentially because they have distinctive patterns in how they divide their time between the shops they visit.

Although data sharing can provide invaluable services, these findings suggest "we ought to rethink and reform how we approach data protection," de Montjoye said. He and his colleagues are now developing strategies known as OpenPDS and SafeAnswers to protect the privacy of metadata, which recently won a SXSW Interactive Innovation Award.

Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/identifying-credit-card-users-with-a-few-bits-of-data

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CHIPS Upcoming Events Video Games Night - Feb. 12

Mobile App Development Workshop - Feb. 13

Video Game Development Workshop—Feb. 27

As technology increases daily, our educational system tends to improve thus causing the traditional method of books and writing to be quickly eradicated. As these changes take place, students tend to demand the use their personal devices on campus and administrators recognized that allowing the use personal devices on the network could improve the educational experience while aiding their recruiting efforts. They also realized that if they did nothing, students would find a way to get onto the network one way of the other. With this thought in mind, the educational board are ultimately faced with two options: approve of the BYOD program and embrace the trending technology or to reject the BYOD program, setting rules to govern the presence and practice of these potentially disruptive devices.

BYOD in the education system has benefits to both the students and the facilitators of the institution. Students normally spend countless hours outside the classroom on their mobile devices, hence with the use of these devices, it can become a learning tools in the classroom. Homework, class assignment, simulators and other helpful materials can be easily accessed through these devices causing them to be more actively involved in learning. With the device at their disposal, it reduces the strain on the educational system where they will no longer required to provide textbooks and other educational materials because students will have the opportunity to access the information needed through eBooks/digital textbooks. With BYOD in the classroom, it helps to train students for their future career for in a technological world we are living in, everything that will be done in the future whether performing a surgery or in a manufacturing plant, will be done by the use of technology thus it would be better off to teach the students from an early age.

However, although BYOD has a very high and promising advantage, there is also a downside to this

idea implementation into the classroom. While studying or completing work in class, students may be distracted by different activities such as games, videos and IM’s. They will also take it further and use these devices create inappropriate contents such as make videos, blackmail or bully others and it may cause a person’s status or reputation to be destroyed. This idea may also lead students to become envious of other individual devices which may cause them to steal these devices which may eventually lead to activities such fighting then eventually killing.

As we take a look at BYOD in the education system, let us not focus on the negative of implementing this idea in the school system because the devices are not JUST tools for playing games. They are considered component in the lives of every human being and by embracing openly and actively in the exploratory use of these tools for both education and entertainment we are opening the door for our students that leads to the heart of the 21st century experience. Thus I employ you, when you read to your children, consider doing so with both physical books and eBooks to help expand their horizon with the devices beyond the short-attention span media that they are encountering in the entertainment arena. Get them involved in deeper, calmer sources of interaction like eBooks or other educational materials that may challenge their minds and as we demonstrate that the devices can be used for knowledge consumption and knowledge contribution, we will better see that BYOD can help advance individuals for the future.

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BYOD and the Education System

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To get more specific, the Pi 2 is running a quad-core, ARMv7 processor clocked at 900MHz (the foundation says that it expects power users to clock it even higher), and it includes 1GB of RAM. The original Pi included a single-core, ARMv6 processor at 700MHz and only 512MB of RAM. Aside from that, the new model is pretty much the same as the latest "Model B+" Pi board. It supports up to 4 USB connections, its primary storage is a Micro SD card, and it all fits on a small green board. The Raspberry Pi Foundation says that performance increases will vary depending on what you're doing with it, but on the whole, they're going to be substantial.

In particular, the foundation sees the Pi 2 as being most important for its educational aspirations. "You're going to see the most celebration from the hackers and the makers because they're

clamoring for better performance," says Pi evangelist Matt Richardson, "but I don't think the education realm realizes how much they're going to like it too." Richardson believes the simple fact that the Pi 2 is faster and more responsive will give students coding with it a much more positive experience.

The Pi's low cost has made it a great match for schools. Beyond being used to teach coding and computer skills, the Pi can also be used to create basic electronics projects, too. It's not totally clear how widely they've been adopted by schools — as Richardson suggests, hackers and makers are its loudest demographics — but the potential is definitely there. That's bolstered by the Pi's inclusion of powerful software like Mathematica, which usually costs hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Until today, the foundation maintained that a new version of

the Pi was still a few years out, in part because changing its processor would result in backward compatibility issues. Obviously, something changed — but Richardson says it's just a matter of the computer being ready sooner than expected. Declining costs now allow them to include a faster processor at the same accessible price. And as for backward compatibility, both Richardson and Powell believe that everything designed for the original Pi should work here, aside from a few edge cases that might require tweaking.

If the Pi 2's launch goes anything like the original Pi's launch, then these tiny computers are likely to be in incredible demand at launch. Hopefully, once the hobbyists are satisfied, plenty of machines will head out for educational uses as well. The Pi 2 goes on sale through the foundation's distributors, including Element14.

Raspberry Pi 2 is way more powerful, still just $35, and available now by Jacob Kastrenakes

Department of Computer and Information Sciences

Northern Caribbean University

Manchester Road, Mandeville,

Manchester.

Phone: +1876 963-7276 * E-mail: cis@ncu.edu.jm

Website: http://cis.ncu.edu.jm