Quote for the Week!

"The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed in these two: common-sense and perseverance."

Owen Feltham

Bundling is the way forward

Believe it or not whilst we are doing more with technology, it is now costing us less. For the fifth year in a row spending on communications services has decreased.

The average households monthly spend on communication services has fallen 1.7 per cent over the past year to £91.24, as more people choose to buy their services in discounted bundles.


It seems the majority of households and businesses are now turning to one supplier for two or more of their services in order to reduce their costs. In the past, people have been reluctant to put ‘all their eggs into one basket’, whereas now it is the sensible way to save money.


Seventy per cent of people with a bundle said that the main reason for taking a bundle was because it was cheaper.

Eat, Sleep, Media!

The average person in the UK spends 15hours 45mins awake per day. Of this time, according to Ofcom’s annual Communications Market Report, the average person spends seven hours and five minutes "engaging in media and communications activities".



The Report that looks into the UK's TV, radio, telecoms and internet industries also shows that we're ‘media multi-tasking’ more than ever before.


Another buzz phrase to add to your technology dictionary, ‘Media Multi-Tasking’, meaning, for example, making a phone call whilst surfing the internet.


As you would expect the group that is most likely to be found doing more than one media related activity at a time is the 16-24 year olds. 52% in fact of that particular age group participates in simultaneous media activity. Compare this to the over 55 age group and that figure slips to 22%.


Smartphones are one of the biggest catalysts for the developing world of multi-tasking. Their growing popularity is rapidly changing the way in which we use our mobiles and increasing our overall use of communications.

Password Security Scare

A team led by Richard Boyd from the Georgia Tech Research Institute has suggested that the growing use of graphics cards as surrogate supercomputers could spell trouble for users of short passwords.

Graphics Cards now have similar number crunching abilities to the multi-million dollar supercomputers built about a decade ago, said Mr Boyd.


The parallel processing systems inside graphics cards are very good at carrying out so-called "brute force" attacks that effectively try every possible combination of letters and numbers until the right one is found.


This means that a password of seven characters or less could soon be "hopelessly inadequate". The researchers suggest passwords should be at least 12 characters long to be safe. Ultimately users will need to rely on whole sentences that are a mix of numbers and letters to ensure no-one else can guess their passwords.

How Technology is Changing Language

It is fair to say that technology has had a "significant impact" on language in the last 10 years, but just how significant has it been to you?



Whilst you might not use the terms TMI (Too Much Information) and WTF (have a guess) in your everyday internet correspondence, both of which can now be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, I bet if you hear someone say “I’ll Google it” – you’ll know exactly what they mean.


It’s official, 'To Google' has become a universally understood verb but not only that, many countries are actually developing their own internet slang.


One example of this is evident in Ukraine, where a written variation of the national tongue has sprung up on internet blogs and message boards called "padronkavskiy zhargon" - in which words are spelled out phonetically. It is often used to voice and emphasise disapproval towards another commentator.


David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Bangor, believes; "The internet is an amazing medium for languages". He claims that new colloquialisms spread like wildfire amongst groups on the net.


"Language itself changes slowly but the internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly."


It still takes at least five years of public usage before a word is introduced to the Oxford English Dictionary, so how long have we got before OMG (Oh My Gosh) and the noun ‘app’ (programmes for the smartphone) is accepted?

Quote for the Week!

"To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first."

Shakespeare

Quote for the Week!

"The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do, well."



Henry W. Longfellow

BlackBerrys threaten national security

Authorities from The United Arab Emirates (UAE) protest that the handset encryption poses a 'national security risk' and that in future BlackBerry mobile phones could be restricted or monitored.


Unfortunately, BlackBerry’s were already on sale before the country introduced its safety emergency and national security legislation in 2007.


The region's telecoms regulator was concerned that certain BlackBerry applications allow people to misuse the service and that this misuse may have "serious social, judicial and national security repercussions".


Currently BlackBerry operates beyond the jurisdiction of national legislation as it is the only device operating in the UAE that instantly exports and stores its data offshore that is also managed by a foreign, commercial organisation.


The UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has taken issue with the encrypted networks used. These make it difficult for governments to monitor communications.


Etisalat is a major telecommunications firm based in the UAE, and has 145,000 BlackBerry users on its books.

Google were not snooping say ICO

The UK's Information Commissioner Office (ICO) has ruled that Google did not grab "significant" personal details when it scooped up data from unsecured wi-fi networks.


The information was gathered when they were logging wi-fi spots to help with location based services.
The ICO said in a statement: "On the basis of the samples we saw, we are satisfied so far that it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data."
It added: "There is also no evidence - as yet - that the data captured by Google has caused or could cause any individual detriment."


The ICO said it would closely monitor other global investigations. Which is probably wish considering Google is still under investigation in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Australia and the US.

Quote for the Week!

"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."

Aristotle Onassis